'This Is American Gestapo': Grave Warnings as Trump Gleefully Defies Courts on Deportations

Top Trump administration officials—including the president, vice president, attorney general, and secretary of state—openly celebrated the deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants over the weekend in defiance of a federal judge's order to halt the removals, which were carried out under a 1798 law that plainly states it is only operative in the context of a declared war.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance wrote late Sunday that "there were violent criminals and rapists in our country" and "President [Donald] Trump deported them." There was no due process for the more than 200 Venezuelans whom the Trump administration claims are gang members.

Vance's social media post, which came in response to reporting about the White House's acknowledgment that it ignored the court order blocking the deportations, was met with disgust and alarm.

"You are beyond vile," political scientist Norman Ornstein wrote. "You have no idea if the ones that were picked up and sent illegally to an El Salvador prison are all violent criminals. You abused the plain language of the law, gave them no due process, and defied a legitimate court order. This is American Gestapo."

On Truth Social, Trump claimed without a shred of evidence that former President Joe Biden "sent" the deported Venezuelans "into our country." Trump went on to thank El Salvador's far-right president, Nayib Bukele, for agreeing to imprison the immigrants. El Salvador's prisons are notorious for abuses, including torture.

Bukele on Sunday mocked the U.S. federal judge's temporary restraining order against the deportations, writing on X that the decision came "too late"—a claim that the White House echoed in defense of its actions, even though the timeline of events shows it was not, in fact, too late to halt the deportations.

"Oopsie," Bukele wrote in a post that U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio shared.

The American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward, and the ACLU of the District of Columbia demanded in a court filing late Sunday that the Trump administration "submit one or more sworn declarations from individuals with direct knowledge of the facts" on whether deportation flights took off after the federal judge issued his order on Saturday.

The episode underscored the Trump administration's contempt for legal restraints on the president's authority to deport people it claims are members of foreign gangs—power which Trump administration officials and supporters suggested is somewhere near absolute. The U.S. Department of Justice declared in a court filing that the Trump administration's actions under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 "are not subject to judicial review."

"This is an absurd claim," wrote Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow with the American Immigration Council. "Not a single president in the history of the United States has ever asserted the authority to unilaterally deport someone outside of the procedures set by Congress until now, and the Supreme Court has emphasized that Congress is supreme on immigration."

Overshadowed by the administration's deportation of Venezuelan immigrants over the weekend was the removal of a kidney transplant specialist and professor at Brown University's medical school, also in defiance of a court order.

As The New York Times reported:

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, is a Lebanese citizen who had traveled to her home country last month to visit relatives. She was detained on Thursday when she returned from that trip to the United States, according to a court complaint filed by her cousin Yara Chehab.

Judge Leo T. Sorokin of the Federal District Court in Massachusetts ordered the government on Friday evening to provide the court with 48 hours' notice before deporting Dr. Alawieh. But she was put on a flight to Paris, presumably on her way to Lebanon.

In a second order filed Sunday morning, the judge said there was reason to believe U.S. Customs and Border Protection had willfully disobeyed his previous order to give the court notice before expelling the doctor.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations demanded Sunday that the U.S. "immediately readmit" Alawieh.

"As a U.S. resident for six years and a doctor working for the Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension at Brown Medicine, Dr. Alawieh played a critical role in treating countless patients who needed treatment by a specialist," the group said in a statement. "Deporting lawful immigrants like Dr. Alawieh without any basis undermines the rule of law and reinforces suspicion that our immigration system is turning into an anti-Muslim, white supremacist institution that seeks to expel and turn away as many Muslims and people of color as possible."