Trump, El Salvador, and the Alien Enemies Act.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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Today's read: 16 minutes.

Coming up.

This Friday, Executive Editor Isaac Saul is writing a piece about California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s new podcast, which brought on a series of provocative conservative figures in its first episodes. While actions from the Trump administration are dominating headlines this week, the conversations provide an interesting look at the thoughts, ideas, and positions that could shape the 2026 midterms and 2028 presidential election.

Quick hits.

1. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke on the phone on Tuesday to discuss the war in Ukraine. Putin agreed to temporarily pause attacks on Ukrainian energy infrastructure (provided Ukraine does the same) but did not commit to the U.S. plan for a 30-day ceasefire. (The call) Separately, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Israel would continue its strikes in Gaza, adding that any future hostage negotiations with Hamas would be conducted “under fire.” (The comments)
2. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s ban on transgender people serving in the military until a lawsuit challenging the order is decided. (The ruling) Separately, a different federal judge indefinitely blocked the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) from making further cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), finding that DOGE’s actions were likely unconstitutional. The judge also ordered email and computer access be restored for all employees of USAID. (The ruling) Elsewhere, a different judge ordered the Trump administration to temporarily reinstate some canceled Department of Education grants while a lawsuit challenging the action proceeds. (The ruling)
3. The Trump administration moved to reinstate roughly 24,000 probationary federal workers who had been fired as part of the administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the government. The move followed a judge’s order for the mass reinstatement of fired probationary workers last week.” (The reinstatements)
4. President Trump reportedly fired two commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission — the only two Democrats on the five-member commission. The two commissioners said they intend to sue to challenge their removal. (The firings)
5. The Trump administration released roughly 80,000 pages of previously classified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. (The release)

Today's topic.

The Alien Enemies Act. On Saturday, the United States government transferred hundreds of noncitizens and alleged gang members to a detention facility in El Salvador, despite an order from a federal judge blocking the deportation flights. According to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, the deportees were transferred on three flights and included 238 alleged members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), as well as 23 alleged members of the street gang Mara Salvatrucha 13 (MS-13). President Trump justified their removal by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798; he had previously designated the group a foreign terrorist organization infiltrating the United States. The detainees were sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) in El Salvador; CECOT is the largest prison facility in Central America.

Back up: The Alien Enemies Act is a 1798 law that gives the president the wartime authority to deport any foreign nationals of an enemy nation. The act has been invoked three times in the past, all during declared wars — The War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. 

On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward preemptively sued the Trump administration, saying five Venezuelan men being held in Raymondville, TX, were at “imminent risk of removal” under the Alien Enemies Act. A hearing for that case began on Saturday, immediately following President Trump’s proclamation invoking the law. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg blocked the deportation order under the president’s justification, however, two of the flights had already departed and the third flight left shortly after. 

The Trump administration then began to defend its decision to send the flights. First, the administration claimed that the judge’s written order did not apply to the first two flights since they had already departed U.S. soil. Second, the administration claimed that all those aboard the third flight were also under Title 8 deportation orders and therefore not subject to Judge Boasberg’s order — the identities of those deported, and which flights they were on, has not yet been confirmed, though an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said on Tuesday that many did not have criminal records in the United States.

Third, on Tuesday, President Trump challenged the ruling by pushing to impeach Judge Boasberg. Trump has a history with Boasberg, a district judge in Washington, D.C., who presided over cases during Trump’s challenge to the 2020 election as well as a challenge from the Trump administration over the Justice Department’s gathering of information in a case alleging Trump’s collusion with Russia. Over the weekend, Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX) introduced articles of impeachment for Judge Boasberg. 

The proposal, along with the president’s message, prompted a rare public comment from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts. “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose,” Justice Roberts said in a statement released on Tuesday.

Today, we’ll share arguments from the right and left about the legal fight over the deportations. Then, my take.

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What the right is saying.

• The right is mixed on the judge’s order and the Trump administration’s response, though many believe the deportations were legally sound. 
• Some say the criticisms of Judge Boasberg are unfounded. 
• Others argue Trump is right to challenge judicial excesses.  

In Fox News, Gregg Jarrett argued “the law supports Trump's deportation of violent gang members, despite judge's errant ruling.”

“The [Alien Enemies Act] permits a president to order the arrest and removal without a court hearing of ‘alien enemies’ whenever there is a declared war or any ‘predatory incursion’ perpetrated, attempted or threatened against the United States. A predatory incursion is broadly defined as entry into the U.S. for purposes that are contrary to the nation’s interests or laws.,” Jarrett wrote. “Even before Trump announced his proclamation, attorneys for the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) sprinted to a federal district judge in Washington DC in what looks like a classic case of ‘forum shopping’ – picking a preferable judge in a favorable venue.”

“There are several troubling aspects of Boasberg’s directive. First, he acted without bothering to hear from the government, depriving the Trump administration of any chance to respond. Second, the five named plaintiffs in the ACLU’s petition were TdA gang members detained in Texas, where a Washington, D.C., judge has no jurisdiction. Third, the exclusive remedy for a litigant who contests the AEA is a habeas corpus petition, not a temporary restraining order,” Jarrett said. “Judge Boasberg reportedly stated that the Alien Enemies Act does not ‘provide a basis for the president’s proclamation given that the terms invasion, predatory incursion really relate to hostile acts perpetrated by any nation and commensurate to war.’ If true, that comment can only be described as a hasty judgment utterly bereft of any knowledge or relevant information.”

In National Review, Andrew C. McCarthy wrote about Trump “stonewall[ing]” the judge.

“Boasberg has not, to this point, ruled against the administration on the central issue: Does the president, under the Alien Enemy Act of 1798, have the authority to unilaterally order the removal of a class of aliens from the United States, without judicial review… on the rationale that the president has concluded — with no input from Congress — that the nation has been invaded and that the Venezuelans are members of a criminal gang (Tren de Aragua) that he has designated a foreign terrorist organization,” McCarthy said. “Boasberg is likely to find that the answer to that question is no… But it is ridiculous to claim that he is trying to usurp the president’s power.”

“Tren de Aragua has long been regarded as an international criminal enterprise that has never been prosecuted on terrorism charges in the U.S. The finding that it is a foreign terrorist organization was unilaterally made by the Trump administration. That doesn’t mean it isn’t true; it means that the president is relying solely on his own power in an area… that the courts have admonished should be addressed, when practicable, by a collaboration of the president and Congress,” McCarthy wrote. “The Trump administration, led by the Justice Department, is materially weakening its litigating position by stonewalling a judge while taking the position that it need not respond to the courts, or consult with Congress, because the president says so.”

In The Federalist, John Daniel Davidson said “Trump is right to push back against judicial supremacy.”

“For too long, we have accepted without question the fallacious notion that the federal judiciary has the exclusive power of constitutional interpretation, and that the states and the other branches of the federal government are bound to accept whatever the courts decide,” Davidson wrote. “Contrary to the false claims of the corporate press, the Trump administration didn’t defy Boasberg and ignore his order. It simply recognized that once the alleged terrorists had been removed from U.S. territory, the federal courts no longer had jurisdiction and could not issue orders concerning them.

“However, by asserting this much the Trump administration signaled that it doesn’t accept the judicial supremacist view that Boasberg can dictate White House policy from the federal bench, much less order U.S. military aircraft to turn around mid-flight,” Davidson said. “What the administration is expressing here is a view of judicial and executive powers that more closely conforms to how the Founding Fathers understood them. Put simply, the Founders didn’t think the judiciary was the sole arbiter of what is and is not constitutional. While the courts, headed by the Supreme Court, indeed have an independent power to interpret and apply the Constitution, that doesn’t mean they are supreme over the other two branches.”

What the left is saying.

• The left calls the Trump administration’s actions open disregard for the law.
• Some say Trump is courting a showdown with the judicial branch. 
• Others say the episode is a test of America’s constitutional system. 

In Slate, Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern wrote “we’ve officially entered the next phase of Trump’s dictatorship era.” 

“Boasberg’s order expressly applied to migrants already en route to El Salvador. So the White House did, quite clearly, defy the order, on the grounds that it could unilaterally conclude its requirements were not ‘lawful,’” Lithwick and Stern said. “If that is sufficient reason to disobey a court ruling, then all judicial rulings are merely advisory, or just suggestions, and the three coequal branches of government have been replaced by an elected monarch. That might sound like an exaggeration, but it aligns with the Justice Department’s disturbing filings in this case. DOJ lawyers have argued that Trump does not even need the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to order these deportations.”

“Trump’s astonishing claim of authority would render the other two branches of government purely advisory in the entire field of immigration enforcement. Congress’ decades of extensive legislation detailing which immigrants can be detained and deported, and under what circumstances, would amount to meager recommendations that the president could disregard.  Under this construction of executive authority, court orders attempting to enforce those laws—or even bedrock constitutional protections—would be similarly voluntary.”

In New York Magazine, Elie Honig suggested Trump is “playing a dangerous game with the courts.”

We “must call out an alternative (and recurring) Trump administration defense: The judge’s decision was a ‘baseless legal ruling no matter when the flights took off’ and therefore the administration was free to ignore it. This rationale is dangerously circular: We think the judge is wrong so we can do whatever we want. The way we decide who is right and wrong is through the courts (including the appeals process) and not by unilateral fiat,” Honig wrote. “If you could ask the Founders what happens to a president who defied the courts, I suspect they’d point to impeachment as the proper constitutional remedy. But we live in modern reality, and that’s not happening.

“Even if the Trump administration has not intentionally defied a court order, they’re getting perilously close to the line and they’re reveling in their adjacency to lawlessness,” Honig added. “The administration had those planes loaded, fueled up, and either waiting on the runway or already airborne by the time the judge ruled, with no intention to wait on official word from the court. The defiance in this scenario isn’t quite intentional; it’s more like intentionally reckless. It’s like if I ran through a house blindfolded and holding a burning torch; I might not intend to set anything on fire, but I sure would know that it’s virtually certain to happen.”

In The Atlantic, David A. Graham said “the president’s definition of law and order is a narrow one.”

“The statements of Trump administration officials elsewhere make it even harder to take their actions as anything other than attempting to defy judges. Salvadoran President Bukele posted a screenshot of a New York Post story about the judge’s order on X with the commentary, ‘Oopsie … Too late’ and a laughing-crying emoji. Chief Bureaucrat Elon Musk replied with the same emoji, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared Bukele’s post from his own account,” Graham wrote. “These actions should be terrifying no matter who is involved. The fact that Tren de Aragua is indeed a vicious gang doesn’t nullify the law—the administration’s claim that the U.S. is contending with a wartime invasion is ridiculous on its face.”

“This is what we might call the Mahmoud Khalil test: No matter whether you think someone’s ideas or actions are deplorable, once the executive branch decides it doesn’t have to follow the law for one person, it has established that it doesn’t have to follow the law for anyone,” Graham said. “Throughout his career, Trump has tested boundaries and, if allowed to do so, pushed further. His actions at the start of this term show that he is more emboldened than ever, and traditionally institutionalist figures such as Rubio seem eager to abet him.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

• A lot of punditry and government statements are muddying the waters on this story.
• To put it simply, the Trump administration has deported hundreds of people we know nothing about.
• The administration argues it’s complying with the order and the law — when this goes to court, I expect it will be overturned.

A great deal of commentary I’ve read about this story has relied on hollow legal takes and worked towards preferred outcomes. 

Several conservative writers justify the deportations with little regard for the law, concluding that the president can invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 without actually understanding anything about what that act does. Many liberals dismiss the law because it is old and rarely used without sufficiently understanding the opening (albeit slim) that the law creates for this kind of enforcement. 

On top of that, a number of administration officials and pundits have sufficiently muddied the waters here — White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt has claimed the administration did not defy the judge’s order while White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called the judge’s order “unlawful.” So let me start by clarifying a few things:

First, we don’t know who these deportees are. The administration has not released the names of or the accusations against the alleged gang members flown to El Salvador. They are now in a foreign prison with no access to phones or ability to contact family members or legal counsel, and we may not find out who they are for some time (if ever). Second, they were all deported without facing any criminal charges or, as far as we know, so much as a hearing in immigration court. Third, although the administration has offered a justification for not complying with Judge Boasberg’s order (that the flights subject to the order were already over international waters when it was issued), they have not offered an explanation; that is, they’ve declined to explain why they couldn’t stop the flights, citing “national security” issues.

Calling this episode “worrisome” is a serious understatement. Ivannoa Sanchez, a 22-year-old who crossed the border illegally and turned herself in to seek asylum in 2023, said her husband went to a routine U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) check-up in February and never came back. She provided ABC News with documents confirming her husband had a scheduled hearing with a judge on March 19 for his asylum case — she now believes he was on the plane that sent hundreds of noncitizens to El Salvador.

Sanchez is just one of several people who have said they believe their family members were arrested and deported on these flights, despite not being accused of any crimes in the U.S. and not having any association with Tren de Aragua (TdA). If that’s true, it would mean Venezuelan migrants whose only crime was crossing the border illegally — who then legally sought asylum and showed up for their court cases or ICE check-ins — have now been sent to one of the world’s harshest prisons without any due process or access to legal counsel. To state the obvious, that is a very big and frightening problem.

That’s not a wild presumption, either. Sworn testimony filed in court by the Trump administration has confirmed that “many” of the deportees had not been accused of any crimes. Last night, ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna suggested the unaccused deportees did not have criminal records in the United States only "because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time." This flips the burden of proof to say "they're probably guilty, and you can't prove they're not." 

Cerna added that ICE determined the deportees’ TdA membership through victim testimony, financial transactions, computer checks and other “investigative techniques,” which — if true — would be good news. But we haven’t seen any of that evidence, and neither has a court; so we can only hope these deportees weren’t randomly targeted based on social media posts or other flimsy allegations. 

For whatever it’s worth, I suspect many of the men deported were, in fact, members of TdA or MS-13, and I strongly support Trump trying to remove gang members from the country. I’m sure ICE is correct that some of them even committed murder, burglary, or other violent crimes while in the United States. When I reviewed the first month of the Trump presidency, I applauded him for limiting illegal border crossings and also for immediately deporting a number of known violent criminals who were walking the streets. And of course, this is an implied criticism of President Biden, who invited this whole mess by opening the doors to mass migration from Venezuela and doing nothing to reform our broken asylum laws, which may have allowed these gang members to slip through. Again: I support Trump in his effort to get members of TdA out of the country. For our immigration system to work, we need to have order and we need to enforce the law.

But that’s precisely the point. We need order. We need lawfulness. We need the government to punish the guilty, but we need it to protect the innocent, too. Arguing the importance of granting due process to alleged murderers or rapists who are here illegally (rather than just kicking them out) isn’t very compelling, but it’s necessary to maintain the liberties and freedoms of American society — not to mention essential to proving they are the people we think they are. I was relieved to see so many conservative pundits criticizing the administration for its actions in this case, an act of intellectual honesty that I applaud.

Of those conservative critics, the most essential read is National Review’s Andrew McCarthy, who I think is one of the great conservative legal minds of our time. He has laid out in great detail the incoherence and unlawfulness of the Trump administration’s position, despite strongly preferring deportations as a policy solution (seriously, go read those linked articles). As McCarthy writes: 

“Much as I would like to see all members of TdA rapidly expelled (in addition to all criminal aliens), the president’s legal position that he can do this with no input from Congress and no judicial review when the country is not at war is untenable.”

The Alien Enemies Act (AEA) alone is not straightforward. It is triggered “whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government.” That means even if you believe Venezuelan gangs are waging a war against the United States, Congress needs to declare war for this power to be vested in Trump. Further, TdA is not a foreign nation or government; it’s a gang from Venezuela. Congress hasn’t declared war on Venezuela, and it isn’t going to.

Trump’s opening, to the degree there is one, is that the AEA can also be declared in the event of an “invasion or predatory incursion.” He may argue that the TdA’s presence constitutes an invasion, and maybe a judge somewhere would uphold that argument, but I’m very skeptical. Not only have Venezuelans and members of TdA arrived in a stream of legal and illegal migration over several years, but the law was clearly written to account for an enemy invasion that pre-empted Congress being able to convene. And, again, it refers to a “foreign nation or government,” of which TdA is neither.

Lastly, remember that the case still hasn’t been tried in court — Boasberg has only blocked the deportations under the AEA while the court considers it. And, (as McCarthy also says), Boasberg is not some leftist judge. He’s ruled against the interests of the left repeatedly, including decisions to release nearly 15,000 emails belonging to Hillary Clinton in 2016 and to reject an effort to force Trump to release his tax returns.

I’ve said this since the beginning of the Trump administration, but it's worth repeating that — for all the noise — much of what Trump has done so far may not be lasting. Trump will see his legacy crumble if it's built solely on expansive executive overreach and unlawful orders. To illustrate my point: 24,000 federal workers were just reinstated after two federal judges ordered the administration to put them back to work. A judge ruled Musk’s dismantling of USAID through DOGE was unconstitutional and has blocked DOGE from making further cuts. Another judge then blocked the administration from banning transgender troops from the military. And that was just on Tuesday. 

Despite very legitimate concerns about Trump disobeying a court order in this case, the administration has been adamant that it has obeyed Boasberg’s order and will continue to obey all court orders. Furthermore, it’s complying with the order to reinstate probationary workers and providing proof of compliance. And despite Trump’s huffing and puffing and the now commonplace theatrics in the House, none of these judges are going to be impeached (kudos to John Roberts for calling out the absurdity of this suggestion). We have checks and balances on judges all the way up the Supreme Court, and it takes two thirds of the Senate to actually convict and remove a judge.

Now that Trump’s latest and most egregious immigration gambits — attempting to deport Mahmoud Khalil and invoking the Alien Enemies Act — both seem to be on the ropes, I’d keep a close eye on whether all this compliance continues. I suspect it will. But if it doesn’t, we’ll see a series of tumultuous legal battles that could eat up much of the administration’s time, focus, and political capital. 

More likely than not, Trump is going to have to try new routes (like passing legislation, or legal executive action) in order to get what he wants. 

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Under the radar.

On Monday, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum announced a joint task force to identify federal land for potential affordable housing developments. The Department of the Interior controls over 500 million acres of federal lands, and the secretaries suggested that large portions are underutilized and could be reimagined as land for housing. “Working together, our agencies can take inventory of underused federal properties, transfer or lease them to states or localities to address housing needs, and support the infrastructure required to make development viable—all while ensuring affordability remains at the core of the mission,” Turner and Burgum said. The Hill has the story.

Numbers.

• 15. The number of federal judges who have been impeached in United States history. 
• 3, 4, and 8. Of those impeached judges, the number who resigned before an outcome at trial, were acquitted by the Senate, and were convicted by the Senate, respectively. 
• 2010. The year Judge Thomas Porteous was impeached on charges of accepting bribes and making false statements under oath, the most recent impeachment of a federal judge. Porteous was then convicted by the Senate and removed from office. 
• 35%. The percentage of Americans who say they have confidence in the judicial system and courts, according to a December 2024 Gallup survey.
• 59%. The percentage of Americans who said they had confidence in the judicial system and courts in 2020. 
• 47%. The percentage of Americans who say President Trump is doing “about the right amount” on deporting unauthorized immigrants, according to a January/February 2025 Pew Research poll. 
• 74% and 21%. The percentage of Republicans and Democrats, respectively, who say President Trump is doing “about the right amount” on deportations. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we wrote about Sen. Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) rebuke of Netanyahu.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was President Trump’s claim that President Biden’s pardons were void because he signed them with an autopen.
• Nothing to do with politics: Can self-driving cars pass the Wile E. Coyote test?
• Yesterday’s survey: 2,009 readers answered our survey on the U.S. strikes against the Houthis in Yemen with 63% supporting the strikes. “When a group attacks US ships we have a President who responds. Very refreshing. He is on record now wanting to engage, but when attacked the USA will respond. A bad policy? Not in my book,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Cougars have been classified as an endangered species since 1973 after being hunted to near extinction in the early 1900s. On March 13, for the first time in over 100 years, wildlife experts confirmed the presence of two endangered cougar cubs — likely to be accompanied by their mother — in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. State biologists have stated that the return of the keystone species is a positive development for local ecosystems. “It's quite unique compared to previous cougar sightings because this is the first verified evidence of cubs in Michigan in more than a century,” the Michigan Department of Natural Resources said. Good Good Good has the story.

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