WASHINGTON >> President Donald Trump has formally asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in his effort to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members using a 227-year-old wartime law.

A brief filed by acting Solicitor General Sarah H. Harris on Friday asks the nation’s highest court to vacate the order issued by a U.S. District Court, which imposed a temporary restraining order blocking the administration from facilitating more deportation flights using that law because it failed to include a process allowing the accused gang members to challenge their designation.

The Trump administration has argued that a single judge should not be able to impede a president’s national security mission.

“This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in the country — the president, through Article II or the judiciary, through TROs,” reads the government’s brief. “The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the president. The republic cannot afford a different choice.”

The Trump administration deported more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador on March 15, triggering a two-week legal melee that led to this moment.

On Thursday, a three-panel appeals court voted 2-to-1 to reject a Justice Department effort to lift U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg’s original order, leaving the Supreme Court as the next obvious step.

Boasberg has said the government needs to prove that the people slated to be deported — in this case, alleged Tren de Aragua gang members — are in fact “alien enemies” prior to removing them from the country.