Yeah, he kinda did. There was some debate about "oh, well the plane is outside US airspace", and other nonsense.

I don't know the legal precedent (if any), but it seems to me that persons carrying out the Felon's orders is the same as the Felon doing them.

It's not the same. Trump is not bound by orders that are issued against his subordinates - unless he's a party to the action, he's not directly bound by the court. He would probably be responsible if he ordered the folks who were bound by the orders to disobey an order of the court, but that's exceptionally unlikely to have taken place in this instance.

The particular hearing in question took place over the weekend, on a Saturday night at around 7:00 PM. AFAIK, the planes landed in El Salvador less than two hours later. It is beyond unlikely that Trump was even made aware of a oral district court order issued on a weekend evening, let alone that he personally would have been consulted to give instruction on whether to comply with the oral directions within the two hour time frame that were relevant here. The choice not to order the planes back to the U.S. would not have been made by POTUS, but several levels down in the government. It's beyond unlikely that this could be framed as the POTUS personally defying an order, or giving unlawful orders that contradict a court order.