The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Friday to allow the use of a presidential proclamation to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to an El Salvador prison, asserting a temporary pause from a lower court has unlawfully interfered with basic powers of the executive branch.

The Justice Department application argues that Judge James E. Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia erred in issuing a temporary restraining order that prevents U.S. officials from sending migrants out of the country under the proclamation without giving the migrants a chance to challenge the move.

The Trump administration argues the case “presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country,” either the president or judges who block those actions.

“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice,” the Justice Department wrote.

The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act because he decided it was imperative to prevent the Tren de Aragua gang from endangering personnel and detainees in U.S. detention facilities and continuing to infiltrate U.S. communities, the filing states.

Removals under that law are “so bound up with critical national-security judgments that they are barely amenable to judicial review at all,” the Justice Department wrote.

“Those orders — which are likely to extend additional weeks — now jeopardize sensitive diplomatic negotiations and delicate national-security operations, which were designed to extirpate TdA’s presence in our country before it gains a greater foothold,” the Justice Department wrote.

The Trump administration argues the judge should not have granted a nationwide temporary restraining order for several reasons, including where the case was filed and the way those identified for removal under the proclamation should file legal challenges.

The American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward filed the lawsuit in Washington under the Administrative Procedure Act on behalf of five detainees as well as others in a similar situation. The Trump administration says the detainees should file individual petitions in Texas, where they are being held.

“Respondents may not leverage the APA to attack the President’s exercise of authority under the Alien Enemies Act in a forum of their choosing,” the filing says.

The Supreme Court filing comes after a 2-1 decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit refusing to lift the temporary restraining order. The opinion in part cited questions about Trump’s referring to migration into the United States as an “invasion” as a justification to invoke the Alien Enemies Act.

White House principal deputy press secretary Harrison Fields, responding Thursday to an email inquiry CQ Roll Call sent to the Justice Department, said Supreme Court review is necessary to “vindicate the President’s authority.”

“President Trump took decisive action to protect the American people from members of a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” Fields said. “The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals’ failure to stay the radical decision of the District Court should shock the conscience of the American people, and constitutes a capitulation to the ongoing, unauthorized infringement on the President’s authority to protect the American people and remove members of a terrorist organization, TdA, from our nation.”