By NICHOLAS RICCARDI

Plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed to halt deportations under a rarely-used 18th century wartime law invoked by President Donald Trump asked a federal judge Monday to force officials to explain under oath whether they violated his court order by removing more than 200 people from the country after it was issued and celebrating it on social media.

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The motion marks another escalation in the battle over Trump’s aggressive opening moves in his second term, several of which have been temporarily halted by judges. Trump’s allies have raged over the holds and suggested he does not have to obey them, and some plaintiffs have said it appears the administration is flouting court orders.

On Saturday night, District Judge James E. Boasberg ordered the administration not to deport anyone in its custody over the newly-invoked Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times before in U.S. history, all during congressionally-declared wars. Trump issued a proclamation that the 1798 law was newly in effect due to what he claimed was an invasion by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.

Trump’s invocation of the act could allow him to deport any noncitizen he says is associated with the gang, without offering proof or even publicly identifying them. The plaintiffs filed their suit on behalf of several Venezuelans in U.S. custody who feared they’d be falsely accused of being Tren de Aragua members and improperly removed from the country.

Told there were plans in the air headed to El Salvador, which has agreed to house deported migrants in a notorious prison, Boasberg said he, and the government, needed to move fast. “You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States,” Boasberg told the government’s lawyer Saturday night.

According to the filing, two planes that took off from Texas’ detention facility when the hearing started more than an hour earlier were in the air at that point, and they apparently continued to El Salvador. A third plane apparently took off after the hearing and Boasberg’s written order was formally published at 7:26 pm eastern time.

El Salvador’s President, Nayib Bukele, on Sunday morning tweeted “Oopsie…too late” above an article referencing Boasberg’s order and announced that more than 200 deportees had arrived in his country. The White House communications director, Steven Cheung, reposted Bukele’s post with an admiring GIF.

Later Sunday, a widely-circulated article in Axios said the administration decided to “defy” the order and quoted anonymous officials who said they concluded it didn’t extend to planes outside U.S. airspace. That drew a quick denial from White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who said in a statement “the administration did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order.”

Leavitt also stated the administration believed the order was not “lawful” and it was being appealed. The administration argues a federal judge does not have the authority to tell the president whether he can determine the country is being invaded under the act, or how to defend it.

The Department of Justice also filed a statement in the lawsuit saying that some people who were “not in United States territory” at the time of the order had been deported and that, if its appeal was unsuccessful, it wouldn’t use Trump’s proclamation as grounds for further deportations.

Boasberg scheduled a 4 p.m. hearing on Monday and said the government should be prepared to answer a series of questions about the flights laid out in the plaintiffs motion.

Boasberg’s order is only in effect for up to 14 days as he oversees the litigation over Trump’s unprecedented use of the act, which is likely to raise new constitutional issues that can only ultimately be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. He had scheduled a hearing Friday for further arguments, but the two organizations that filed the initial lawsuit, the ACLU and Democracy Forward, urged him to force the administration to explain in a declaration under oath what happened.

The government’s statements, the plaintiffs wrote, “strongly suggests that the government has chosen to treat this Court’s Order as applying only to individuals still on U.S. soil or on flights that had yet to clear U.S. airspace as of 7:26pm (the time of the written Order).”

“If that is how the government proceeded, it was a blatant violation of the Court’s Order,” they added.

By MICHAEL CASEY, RODRIQUE NGOWI and KATHY McCORMACK, Associated Press

BOSTON (AP) — A doctor from Lebanon who arrived at the Boston airport was deported over the weekend without explanation, despite having a U.S. visa and a job teaching at Brown University.

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A judge had ordered she not be sent back until there was a hearing, but government lawyers said customs officials did not get word in time.

It’s the latest deportation of a foreign-born person with a U.S. visa in the past week, after a student at Columbia who led protests of the Gaza war was arrested, and another student’s visa was revoked. The Trump administration also transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations.

Dr. Rasha Alawieh, 34, had been granted the visa on March 11 and arrived at Boston Logan International Airport on Thursday, according to a complaint filed on her behalf by a cousin in federal court.

Alawieh, who had worked and lived in Rhode Island previously, was detained at least 36 hours, through Friday, and was going to be sent back to Lebanon, the complaint said. Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist, was to start work at Brown University as an assistant professor of medicine.

U.S. District Judge Leo Sorokin issued an order on Friday that an in-person hearing be scheduled Monday, with Alawieh brought to court.

“Whether or not she is in custody of the United States, the court anticipates proceeding with this hearing,” he wrote.

But by Saturday, the cousin filed a motion that customs officials “willfully” disobeyed the order by sending Alawieh back to Lebanon.

Lawyers for the government explained in a court filing Monday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Boston Logan International Airport did not receive notice of the order until she “had already departed the United States,” the judge noted. They asked that the petition be dismissed.

The judge put a hearing on her case on hold, to give Alawieh’s lawyers time to prepare.

Alawieh has worked at Brown prior to the issuance of her H1B visa, the complaint said. It said she has held fellowships and residencies at three universities in the United States.

A spokesperson for Brown said Alawieh is an employee of Brown Medicine with a clinical appointment to Brown.

Brown Medicine is a not-for-profit medical practice that is its own organization and serves its own patients directly. It is affiliated with Brown University’s medical school.

“My colleagues and I are outraged over Dr Alawieh’s deportation. She is a valued colleague and we hope for justice and her return to Rhode Island,” said George Bayliss, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University.

U.S. Rep. Gabe Amo of Rhode Island, a Democrat, said in a statement over the weekend that is “committed to getting answers from the Department of Homeland Security to provide Dr. Alawieh, her family, her colleagues, and our community the clarity we all deserve.”

A rally was planned to support her Monday night at the Rhode Island statehouse.

By STAN CHOE, AP Business Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are holding steadier Monday, and the market’s scary roller-coaster ride from recent weeks is slowing. The calm trading may be short-lived, though, with a decision by the Federal Reserve on interest rates coming later in the week and worries continuing about President Donald Trump’s trade war.

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The S&P 500 was 0.2% higher in morning trading, coming off its fourth straight losing week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 144 points, or 0.3%, as of 10:30 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower.

Stocks have been tumbling recently on worries that Trump’s rat -a- tat announcements on tariffs and other policies are creating so much uncertainty that they’ll push U.S. households and businesses to freeze their spending, which would hurt the economy. Surveys have shown sharp drops in confidence, and some companies are already warning about changes in behavior from their customers.

A report on Monday said U.S. retailers broadly saw weaker revenue last month than economists expected, but it may not have been quite as bad as it seemed on the surface.

Much of the shortfall in growth versus expectations was due to weaker-than-forecast sales of automobiles and lower fuel costs. Outside of them, the performance was closer to expectations.

Treasury yields initially rose immediately following the report’s release. That’s often an indication of firming confidence among bond investors about the strength of the U.S. economy. But yields quickly yo-yoed afterward.

“In our view, this morning’s February retail sales report offers evidence of a limited, modest economic slowdown, rather than signaling a gathering recession,” said Jennifer Timmerman, investment strategy analyst at Wells Fargo Investment Institute.

It’s a sharp turnaround for investors to talk about a possible recession after the U.S. economy closed last year running at a solid rate and investors were so excited about policies coming from Trump to accelerate it. To be sure, hiring still remains relatively healthy, and that could help keep the economy growing if it can continue. But the talk about recession by itself could sap confidence.

That’s the precarious stage onto which Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell will step Wednesday, when he announces the Fed’s latest decision on interest rates.

Virtually no one expects the Fed to make a move Wednesday. The central bank has been keeping rates steady so far this year, preferring to see how conditions play out. Earlier, heading into the end of last year, it had been cutting rates sharply in hopes of relaxing pressure on the U.S. economy after high inflation had slowed.

Wall Street’s focus will be on what Powell says about the rest of the year. Expectations are still high the Fed may cut its main interest rate at least two or three times in 2025. The risk of cutting interest rates too quickly or aggressively is that it could push up inflation. But keeping rates too high for too long could also create unnecessary pain for the economy by slowing borrowing and overall activity.

On Wall Street, Intel climbed 7.9% to extend its gains after the chip company named former board member and semiconductor industry veteran Lip-Bu Tan as its CEO.

PepsiCo added 2% after saying it agreed to buy Poppi, a prebiotic soda brand, for a net $1.65 billion.

They helped offset a 5.2% drop for Tesla. The electric-vehicle company’s stock has been struggling this year amid worries that its brand has become too intertwined with Elon Musk, who has been leading efforts to cut spending by the U.S. government. Tesla vehicles and dealerships have become targets of people unhappy with Trump and his policies.

In the bond market, Treasury yields were mixed. The yield on the 10-year Treasury went from 4.28% shortly before the release of the retail sales report to nearly 4.33% immediately afterward. It then pulled back to 4.28%, down from its 4.31% level late Friday.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.

Chinese markets rose after the government reported stronger than expected factory data. Later Monday, officials briefed reporters about Beijing’s efforts to get consumers to spend more, seen as key to getting the economy out of its doldrums.

Stocks rose 0.8% in Hong Kong and 0.2% in Shanghai.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — A former pastor of a Texas megachurch is expected to turn himself into Oklahoma authorities Monday on child sexual abuse charges.

Robert Preston Morris, 63, is expected to surrender to officials in Osage County, where he was charged last week with five counts of lewd or indecent acts with a child, his attorney, Mack Martin, told The Associated Press.

Martin declined to comment on the charges against Morris, but said he anticipated entering a not guilty plea on Morris’ behalf.

Court records show an Osage County judge set a $50,000 bond and ordered Morris to surrender his passport to the local sheriff.

Morris resigned last year as pastor of Gateway Church in the Dallas suburb of Southlake after a woman accused him of sexually abusing her in the 1980s.

The alleged abuse started in 1982 when the victim, referred to in the indictment as C.C., was 12 years old and Morris was a traveling evangelist staying in Hominy, Oklahoma, with her family, according to the attorney general’s office. The abuse allegedly continued for four years.

Cindy Clemishire, Morris’ accuser, said in a statement that she is very grateful to the authorities who have worked to make the indictment possible and is hopeful “justice will ultimately prevail.”

“After almost 43 years, the law has finally caught up with Robert Morris for the horrific crimes he committed against me as a child,” said Clemishire, now 55. “Now, it is time for the legal system to hold him accountable.”

The AP typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted, but Clemishire said she would like her name included.

Morris was known to be politically active. The church hosted President Donald Trump on its Dallas campus in 2020 for a discussion on race relations and the economy.

Morris could face up to 20 years in prison for each of the five charges, according to the attorney general’s office.