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Within weeks of of being inaugurated for the second time, President Donald Trump rescinded the designation of Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals living in the United States. He then invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and immediately deported three planes full of Venezuelan men to El Salvador, where they are now being housed in a notorious prison for alleged gang members. 

When an emergency, ACLU-led court hearing resulted in U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordering an immediate halt to the deportations, including a demand that the flights be turned around mid-air, the Trump administration defied the order. The White House claims the planes were already outside U.S. airspace at the time the order was issued, so therefore the order didn’t apply. 

Ahilan Arulanantham, co-director of the Center for Immigration Law and Policy at the UCLA School of Law, is working on a lawsuit that challenges Trump’s cancellation of TPS for Venezuelan nationals. He spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about Trump’s blatantly illegal treatment of Venezuelan nationals.