Takeaways from Trump's move to send Venezuelan migrants in the US to a prison in El Salvador

On Friday, March 14, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law giving him immense powers to deport noncitizens in a time of war.

His use of that law was aimed at Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that he has repeatedly and falsely claimed as part of an invasion of criminal immigrants. Over the next 24 hours, more than 130 Venezuelans were deported to an El Salvadoran prison even as a U.S. judge ordered the planes carrying them to turn around.

Here’s what you need to know about the situation:

Trump had long promised to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to combat illegal immigration. The law crafted during the presidency of John Adams had been used just three times: during the War of 1812 and the two world wars.

The Trump administration had begun moving closer to calling the migrant issue a war, most notably by designating eight Latin American criminal groups, including Tren de Aragua, as “foreign terrorist organizations.”

U.S. immigration authorities use a series of “gang identifiers” to spot members of Tren de Aragua. Some are obvious, such as trafficking drugs with known gang members.

Some are more surprising: Chicago Bulls jerseys, “high-end urban street wear,” and tattoos of clocks, stars and crowns, according to government instructional material filed in court by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Ordinary tattoos were key to marking many deported men as Tren members, according to documents and lawyers.

One of those men was a makeup artist who said he fled Venezuela after his boss at a state-run news channel publicly slapped him. In a country where political repression and open homophobia are both part of life, it’s hard to be a gay man who does not support President Nicolás Maduro.

Hoping to find a new life in America, Andry José Hernández Romero made his way north and arranged an appointment at a U.S. border crossing in San Diego.

There, he was asked about his tattoos. Romero has a crown tattooed on each wrist. One is next to the word “Mom.” The other next to “Dad.” The crowns, his lawyer says, also pay homage to his hometown’s Christmastime “Three Kings” festival, and to his work in beauty pageants.

Romero, who insists he has no ties to Tren, was transferred to a California detention center.

Then, around March 7, he was moved to a facility in Laredo, Texas, a three-hour bus ride from the South Texas city of Harlingen.

Two days before the March 14 deportations, jets chartered by a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement began landing in Harlingen from across the U.S., some carrying detained Venezuelans.

Court documents later showed that for at least the previous week, Venezuelan men in many immigration detention centers were being moved by bus and plane toward ICE’s El Valle Detention Facility, close to the Harlingen airport.

Then, a flight analyst for the advocacy group Witness at the Border noticed two Saturday flights scheduled from Harlingen to El Salvador. That was unusual. Deportations are fairly rare on Saturdays, as are deportation flights from Harlingen to El Salvador, said the analyst, Tom Cartwright, whose social media feeds are closely watched in immigration circles.

On March 14, with the Alien Enemies Act hours from being invoked and more than a day from being announced, word was filtering out from a group of Venezuelan men held at El Valle. Around 3 a.m., roughly 100 had been awakened by guards and told they were being deported. Ten hours later, the men were back in their bunks. The flight had been canceled, they were told, and they would leave soon.

Within hours, an informal legal network was frantically trying to stop those deportations and working with Texas lawyers who would file federal court petitions.

Meanwhile, later that Friday, with signs growing that deportations could be imminent, two legal advocacy groups, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, felt they had to file preemptively.

They spent hours drafting a petition on behalf of five detained Venezuelans who feared being falsely labeled members of Tren and deported.

Finally, early Saturday morning they filed the petition with the U.S. District Court in Washington, seeking to halt all deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Later that day, Judge James E. Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order in response to the ACLU lawsuit and scheduled a 5 p.m. hearing.

In Texas, though, things began to move faster. Guards gathered prisoners at the El Valle detention center, ordering them onto buses for the airport. The flights carried a total of 261 deportees, the White House later said, including 137 Venezuelans deported under the Alien Enemies Act, 101 under other immigration regulations, and 23 El Salvadoran members of the gang MS-13.

About 4 p.m. the White House posted Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

Roughly an hour later Boasberg opened his hearing over Zoom.

He asked whether the government planned to deport anyone under the proclamation “in the next 24 or 48 hours.” The ACLU warned that deportation planes were about to take off. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign said he was unsure of the flight details.

Eventually Boasberg issued a new order to stop deportations being conducted under the Alien Enemies Act. He said any planes in the air needed to come back.

“This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told Ensign.

By then, two ICE Air planes were heading across the Gulf of Mexico and toward Central America. Neither turned around.

The next morning, El Salvador’s president tweeted a New York Post headline saying Boasberg had ordered the planes turned around.

“Oopsie … Too late,” Nayib Bukele wrote, adding a laughing/crying emoji.

The Trump administration is now urging the Supreme Court for permission to resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Boasberg soon could rule on whether there are grounds to find anyone in contempt of court for defying his court order.

As for Romero, the makeup artist, he’s somewhere in CECOT.

FILE - In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, prison guards transfer deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File)

FILE - U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, March 16, 2023. (Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via AP, File)

FILE - In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, a prison guard transfers deportees from the U.S., alleged to be Venezuelan gang members, to the Terrorism Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 16, 2025. (El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File)

Prisoners look out of their cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

A prisoner with a tattoo with leg irons on stands as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

Prisoners sit in their cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

FILE - A mega-prison known as Detention Center Against Terrorism (CECOT) stands in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 5, 2023. (AP Photo/Salvador Melendez, File)

The U.N. Security Council scheduled an emergency meeting Thursday to discuss Iran's deadly protests at the request of the United States, even as President Donald Trump left unclear what actions he would take against the Islamic state.

Tehran appeared to make conciliatory statements in an effort to defuse the situation after Trump threatened to take action to stop further killing of protesters, including the execution of anyone detained in Tehran’s bloody crackdown on nationwide protests.

Iran’s crackdown on the demonstrations has killed at least 2,615, the U.S.-based Human Rights Activists News Agency reported. The death toll exceeds any other round of protest or unrest in Iran in decades and recalls the chaos surrounding the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for hours without explanation early Thursday and some personnel at a key U.S. military base in Qatar were advised to evacuate. The U.S. Embassy in Kuwait also ordered its personnel to “temporary halt” travel to the multiple military bases in the small Gulf Arab country.

Iran previously closed its airspace during the 12-day war against Israel in June.

Here is the latest:

“We are against military intervention in Iran,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told journalists in Istanbul on Thursday. “Iran must address its own internal problems… They must address their problems with the region and in global terms through diplomacy so that certain structural problems that cause economic problems can be addressed.”

Ankara and Tehran enjoy warm relations despite often holding divergent interests in the region.

Fidan said the unrest in Iran was rooted in economic conditions caused by sanctions, rather than ideological opposition to the government.

Iranians have been largely absent from an annual pilgrimage to Baghdad, Iraq, to commemorate the death of Imam Musa al-Kadhim, one of the twelve Shiite imams.

Many Iranian pilgrims typically make the journey every year for the annual religious rituals.

Streets across Baghdad were crowded with pilgrims Thursday. Most had arrived on foot from central and southern provinces of Iraq, heading toward the shrine of Imam al-Kadhim in the Kadhimiya district in northern Baghdad,

Adel Zaidan, who owns a hotel near the shrine, said the number of Iranian visitors this year compared to previous years was very small. Other residents agreed.

“This visit is different from previous ones. It lacks the large numbers of Iranian pilgrims, especially in terms of providing food and accommodation,” said Haider Al-Obaidi.

Europe’s largest airline group said Thursday it would halt night flights to and from Tel Aviv and Jordan's capital Amman for five days, citing security concerns as fears grow that unrest in Iran could spiral into wider regional violence.

Lufthansa — which operates Swiss, Austrian Airlines, Brussels Airlines and Eurowings — said flights would run only during daytime hours from Thursday through Monday “due to the current situation in the Middle East.” It said the change would ensure its staff — which includes unionized cabin crews and pilots -- would not be required to stay overnight in the region.

The airline group also said its planes would bypass Iranian and Iraqi airspace, key corridors for air travel between the Middle East and Asia.

Iran closed its airspace to commercial flights for several hours early Thursday without explanation.

A spokesperson for Israel’s Airport Authority, which oversees Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, said the airport was operating as usual.

Iranian state media has denied claims that a young man arrested during Iran’s recent protests was condemned to death. The statement from Iran’s judicial authorities on Thursday contradicted what it said were “opposition media abroad” which claimed the young man had been quickly sentenced to death during a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in the country.

State television didn’t immediately give any details beyond his name, Erfan Soltani. Iranian judicial authorities said Soltani was being held in a detention facility outside of the capital. Alongside other protesters, he has been accused of “propaganda activities against the regime,” state media said.

New Zealand’s Foreign Minister Winston Peters said Thursday that his government was “appalled by the escalation of violence and repression” in Iran.

“We condemn the brutal crackdown being carried out by Iran’s security forces, including the killing of protesters,” Peters posted on X.

“Iranians have the right to peaceful protest, freedom of expression, and access to information – and that right is currently being brutally repressed,” he said.

Peters said his government had expressed serious concerns to the Iranian Embassy in Wellington.

A demonstrator lights a cigarette with a burning poster depicting Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei during a rally in support of Iran's anti-government protests, in Holon, Israel, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ohad Zwigenberg)

Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Protesters participate in a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)