There is a "fair likelihood" the Trump administration violated a court order temporarily blocking the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members under a rarely invoked 18th-century law, a U.S. judge said on Thursday.

The Trump administration has fired back at a federal judge in San Francisco who stopped it from revoking deportation protections this month for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans in Florida and other states, saying the judge has no authority to block the decision and that it should be addressed on an emergency basis by a higher appeals court.

Two days later, he was on a plane heading to El Salvador's most notorious prison. The Trump administration deported Echavez and 237 countrymen labeled as Venezuelan gang members - with no chance to contest the allegations in court.