Former Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and current White House Border Czar Tom Homan speaks to the press outside the West Wing of the White House in Washington, DC on Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI |
License PhotoMarch 23 (UPI) — “Border czar” Tom Homan on Sunday said the Trump administration will follow a judge’s orders blocking it from deporting migrants from the United States after invoking a more than 200-year-old law to sidestep traditional deportation procedures.
Homan’s comments come after federal judge James Boasberg last week ordered the administration to halt deportations of any migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and to turn planes around that were already in the air, which the administration did not do.
The aircraft, carrying people who the Trump administration has alleged are members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the administration has labeled a terrorist organization, later landed in El Salvador.
The migrants were sent to the notoriously hostile Terrorism Confinement Center under a deal between the Trump administration and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, where they will be held for a “renewable” period of one year.
“That plane removed 240 terrorists from the United States,” Homan said during an interview on ABC’s This Week.
“Look that’s will be litigated in the courts with this judge,” Homan continued, referring to Boasberg and adding, in reference to the more than 200 migration-related cases filed in the courts that he was “not going to get into every specific case.”
“I don’t care what the judges think as far as this case,” Homan said, noting that the administration would “abide by the court order as litigated.”
He reiterated, however, that the administration is “going to continue to arrest public safety threats and national security threats. We’re going to continue to deport them from the United States.”
Some family members of the deported migrants argued that they were not members of the gang and should not have been treated as such.
Venezuela said Saturday it will begin accepting deported migrants who were in the United States illegally as soon as Sunday.
Venezuela had stopped accepting the flights after Trump revoked a Biden administration-era rule that allowed more oil to be produced in and exported from Venezuela in exchange for accepting deportation flights.
“Migration isn’t a crime, and we will not rest until we achieve the return of all of those in need and rescue our brothers kidnapped in El Salvador,” the Venezuelan government said in a statement.
