A legal showdown this past weekend shows that the Trump administration is continuing to test the limits of how far they can get away with ignoring or defying court orders.

On Saturday, Trump officials attempted to rapidly deport a bunch of people they said were Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador — based on a new and initially secret legal rationale — before progressive activists could sue and judges could stop them.

However, the activists did sue and, while deportation flights were either in the air or about to leave, a judge did issue an order to stop them.

But the administration ignored the judge’s order and refused to turn around or halt the flights, which handed over a reported 261 immigrants into Salvadoran custody.

Trump officials cited a few reasons for letting the deportations proceed. One is that, because two of the flights had already departed US territory, the judge’s order (they claim) no longer bound them. They’ve also asserted that the new legal authority Trump invoked — an obscure, rarely-used law known as the Alien Enemies Act — is un-reviewable by federal courts.

Notably, Trump officials seem hesitant to say they were flat-out defying a court order. After an Axios story making that claim was published, it was updated with an anonymous official’s statement: “Very important that people understand we are not actively defying court orders.” But the story makes clear they had the court order in hand and chose to ignore it.

Indeed, the way the Trump........

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