“I ALWAYS ABIDE by the courts,” claimed President Donald Trump last month. A few weeks on, this commitment to respect judicial decisions is looking shakier. On March 15th, a district-court judge ordered the Trump administration to turn around several deportation flights en route to El Salvador containing 261 migrants—most of them alleged to be members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a Venezuelan gang. The government’s rationale for the deportations—and its explanation for why the planes landed in the Central American country, despite the court order—have been messy and opaque. The ongoing saga presents the most striking example yet of the administration’s attempts to overpower a co-equal branch of government.
