The Venezuelans emerging from their plane were not in prison clothes, but in designer jeans and branded tracksuits. Their faces were the faces of guys who in no way expected what they first saw—an ocean of soldiers and police, an entire army assembled to apprehend them.

Immigration officials transported 238 Venezuelan men from the United States to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador over the weekend, despite a court order from a federal judge prohibiting the government from carrying out the expulsions.