Karoline Leavitt pushed back against a report that claimed the Trump administration willfully ignored a court order to return alleged Venezuelan gang members.

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.

President Donald Trump's legal maneuver to invoke a 1798 law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members has sparked a court showdown.

It comes after two judge ordered probationary employees who were let go as part of mass hirings to at least temporarily be brought back to work.

An appeals court on Monday rejected the Trump administration’s request for an immediate stay on a lower court ruling that reinstated thousands of probationary federal employees who had been fired. A three-judge panel on the U.