A United States judge said on Wednesday that he had found “probable cause” to hold President Donald Trump’s administration in contempt in a deportation case, raising the stakes in the White House’s confrontation with the justice system.

The White House said it planned an “immediate” appeal to the decision by District Judge James Boasberg, who had ordered the government to halt flights of more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members to El Salvador.

Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order on March 15 to halt the deportations, which were carried out under an obscure wartime law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which strips away the usual legal due process.

In a written opinion, the judge cited evidence that the government had engaged in “deliberate or reckless disregard” of his order when it proceeded with the flights.

“Defendants provide no convincing reason to avoid the conclusion that appears obvious … that they deliberately flouted this court’s written order and, separately, its oral command that explicitly delineated what compliance entailed,” he wrote.

The administration’s actions were “sufficient for the court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt”, Boasberg wrote.

The judge said the government would be offered a final chance to “purge such contempt” or face further court action.

Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has flirted with open defiance of the judiciary following setbacks to his right-wing agenda, with deportation cases taking centre stage.

“We plan to seek immediate appellate relief,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement after the judge’s ruling. “The president is 100 per cent committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.”

‘Administrative error’

In invoking the Alien Enemies Act, which had only been used previously during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, Trump said he was targeting transnational gangs he had declared foreign terrorist organisations.

That included the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua, but lawyers for several of the deported Venezuelans have said that their clients were not gang members, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.

Trump’s administration is also under fire over its admission that Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was living in the eastern state of Maryland and married to a US citizen, was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador due to an “administrative error”.

A judge has ordered Trump to “facilitate” his return, an order upheld by the Supreme Court, but his government has said the court did not have the authority to order it to have him returned.

Trump has alleged, without offering evidence, that Abrego Garcia is “an MS-13 gang member and foreign terrorist from El Salvador”, while Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed that he was “engaged in human trafficking”. The man has never been charged with any crimes.

The Republican president has criticised rulings that curb his policies and power, and attacked the judges who issued them, including Boasberg.

Trump has also moved to settle scores with law firms that represented his political foes in the past or helped bring him to court on civil or criminal charges.