White House questions authority of judge's verbal order on Venezuelan deportation flights

The White House on Monday cast doubt on the authority of a verbal order from a judge directing the administration to turn around planes carrying Venezuelan migrants out of the country.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt faced several questions during a briefing about the administration’s decision to ignore the order from a federal judge. The judge in the case issued a verbal order shortly before filing a written order in the case directing the planes be turned around.

“All of the planes subject to the written order of this judge departed U.S. soil, U.S. territory before the judge’s written order,” Leavitt said.

“But what about the verbal order, which of course carries the same legal weight as a written order?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins asked.

“Well, there’s actually questions about whether a verbal order carries the same weight as a written order, and our lawyers are determined to ask and answer those questions in court,” Leavitt responded.

Her comments came hours before a court hearing on the matter.

President Trump over the weekend signed an order invoking wartime powers to swiftly deport anyone suspected of membership in the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The process does not allow for a hearing, sparking fears it will lead to widespread deportations of Venezuelans without connection to the gang.

But while the order from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked the deportations from taking effect, the Trump administration was accused of not following the judge’s order to turn around any planes carrying Venezuelans targeted under that order.

Leavitt and other administration officials have vigorously defended the deportations, arguing that those targeted had ties to violent gangs and that their removal made the country safer.

“We're not stopping. I don't care what the judges think. I don't care what the left thinks. We're coming,” Tom Homan, the Trump administration’s border czar, said on Fox News.

Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration paid the government of El Salvador roughly $6 million to take in those immigrants and house them in their prisons.

The press secretary argued the sum was “pennies on the dollar in comparison to the cost of life and the cost it would impose on the American taxpayer to house these terrorists here in maximum-security prisons here in the United States of America.”

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