A judge in the United States has said there is “probable cause” to hold US President Donald Trump’s administration in criminal contempt for disregarding his order to turn around deportation flights to El Salvador.

In a written ruling on Wednesday, US District Judge James Boasberg said the Trump administration had shown “willful disregard” for his March 15 ruling that the government could not deport alleged Venezuelan gang members under an 18th-century wartime law without giving them a chance to challenge their removal.

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The Trump administration’s actions were “sufficient for the court to conclude that probable cause exists to find the government in criminal contempt,” Boasberg said in his 46-page ruling.

“The Court does not reach such conclusion lightly or hastily; indeed, it has given Defendants ample opportunity to rectify or explain their actions,” Boasberg added.

“None of their responses has been satisfactory.”

Boasberg said the administration still had the opportunity to avoid being held in contempt if it allowed deportees to oppose their removals in court.

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White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said the administration would appeal the ruling.

“The President is 100 percent committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country,” Cheung said in a statement posted on social media.

Boasberg’s ruling is the closest any court has come to suggesting that Trump administration officials could be punished over the controversial deportation flights.

The Trump administration has deported 238 migrants that it claims are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador, where they have been confined in the Centre for the Confinement of Terrorism, a 40,000-capacity, maximum-security prison.

US officials have released little evidence to support their claims of gang membership, and US media outlets have reported that there is no public information to suggest that any but a small minority of the deportees have criminal records.

Trump has controversially invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which grants the US president authority to detain or deport noncitizens during wartime, to carry out the deportations.

Critics have condemned the use of the law, arguing that the US is not currently under any threat of “invasion” as a result of being at war.