WASHINGTON: The Trump administration has deported alleged members of a Venezuelan gang from the US despite a court order forbidding it from doing so, saying in an extraordinary statement that a judge did not have the authority to block its actions.

The deportation operation followed a move by Judge James Boasberg to block President Donald Trump`s use of the Alien Enemies Act`s wartime powers to rapidly deport more than 200 alleged members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that has been linked to kidnapping, extortion and contract killings.

`A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft ... full of foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from US soil, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

She said the court had `no lawful basis` and that federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over how a president conducts foreign affairs. The turn of events represented a remarkable escalation in Trump`s challenge to the US Constitution`s system of checks and balances and the independence of the judicial branch of government.

Patrick Eddington, a homeland security and civil liberties legal expert at the libertarian Cato Institute, said that, whatever it might say, the White House was in `open defiance` of the judge. `This is beyond the pale and certainly unprecedented,` Eddington said, calling it the most radical test of America`s system of checks and balances since the Civil War.-Reuters