Trump spokesperson: 'We played a little game of catch me if you can' on deportations

A White House spokesperson asserted the federal judge who ordered the Trump administration to turn around flights with Venezuelan migrants headed to El Salvador was "too slow."

“The president will always follow the law, but this judge was too slow. We played a little game of 'catch me if you can,' and guess what, the judge wasn't able to catch us on this one,” White House deputy press secretary Harrison Fields said on NewsNation’s "Morning in America."

Fields also argued the judge overstepped on President Trump's authority, echoing other administration officials who have claimed the president's authority under the Alien Enemies Act supersedes such court orders.

The Trump administration has faced broad scrutiny over its moves to bypass orders over the weekend from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg aimed at halting the deportations.

Trump and his allies have gone after the judge, calling for him to be impeached and for the case to be reassigned.

Boasberg, meanwhile, lashed out at the Trump administration in a hearing Monday evening for refusing to answer questions about the flights he ordered turned around.

Trump on Saturday invoked the Alien and Enemies Act of 1798 while removing hundreds of immigrants that the White House has accused of being tied to gangs including Tren De Aragua, which started in Venezuela and was designated by the Trump administration as a terrorist group in February.

Trump invoked the act to quickly deport the Venezuelan immigrants. The rarely used 18th-century wartime law allows the federal government to detain or deport people who are natives and citizens of countries deemed foreign adversaries.

“These are foreign terrorists, that the president has identified them, and designated them as such, and we will continue to follow the Alien Enemies Act,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday during an appearance on Fox News’s “Jesse Watters Primetime.”

The federal judge has ordered the administration to provide info on the flight timelines or justification for refusing to do so by noon Tuesday.

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