El Salvador’s president and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio appeared to celebrate a deportation flight that carried illegal immigrants out of the country even after a federal judge asked for the plane to be turned around.
“Oopsie,” El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said on social media, in a post promoted by Mr. Rubio.
Immigrant-rights groups ran to a federal judge, Obama-appointee James E. Boasberg, to demand he get to the bottom of things.
President Trump directed the deportations with a proclamation Friday flexing the Alien Enemies Act, a founding era law that remains from the Alien and Sedition Acts and allows swift ouster of targets deemed a major threat.
Immigration activists learned of the deportations and sued, and with planes in the air Saturday, Judge Boasberg stepped in and demanded they be returned.
“Any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” he said during a hearing.
He reiterated that directive in a written order.
In a notice to the judge Sunday, the government admitted that “some gang members subject to removal under the proclamation had already been removed from United States territory under the proclamation before the issuance of this court’s second order.”
Judge Boasberg has set a hearing for later Monday to get full answers as to whether any planes departed, were still in the air or landed elsewhere after his orders — both the one made orally during the hearing and his written order.
