The White House is denying that it violated a judge’s order Saturday to halt the deportations of Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador, which, if it did occur, would take legal showdowns over the administration’s claims of vast presidential power closer to the edge of a constitutional crisis.

The immigrants were deported under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times prior and requires a president to declare the United States is at war.

A plane carrying more than 200 Venezuelans deported by the US has landed in El Salvador - in apparent defiance of a US judge's order preventing the Trump administration from doing so.El Salvador's president,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced yesterday that hundreds of Venezuelans accused of being gang members were sent from the U.S. to El Salvador, a day after a federal judge ordered the Trump administration to cease such deportations.

The White House said it followed the court’s written ruling. The judge verbally instructed planes en route to turn around.

A federal judge in an emergency order instructed the administration it could not use wartime laws to deport immigrants it claims are associated with organized crime