Administration: ‘Many' Venezuelans sent to El Salvador prison had no U.S. criminal record

Miami Herald

19-03-2025

The Trump administration has admitted in federal court documents that 'many' Venezuelans it accused of being dangerous gang members and deported through presidential wartime powers have no criminal records in the United States, but argued it was only because they had only been in the U.S. briefly.
President Donald Trump used a centuries-old law, the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, to deport the Venezuelans without due process in the U.S., saying they were members of the feared Tren de Aragua gang.
'The lack of criminal records does not indicate they pose a limited threat. In fact, based upon their association with Tren de Aragua, the lack of specific information about each specific individual actually highlights the risk they pose,' said Robert Cerna, a top Immigration and Customs Enforcement official, in a sworn statement filed Monday night to a the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C.
READ MORE: Trump sent these Venezuelans to El Salvador mega prison. Their families deny gang ties.
Cerna's statement and other court documents offer critical insight into how the federal government justifies which Venezuelans to send to a mega prison in El Salvador as part of a deal the Trump administration brokered with President Nayib Bukele last month. Bukele said they would remain in prison for at least a year.
The move has ignited widespread alarm over the extent of Trump's executive authority and due process violations. The White House has argued that the deportations were justified in the name of public safety.
Cerna's statement is part of a lawsuit challenging an executive order in which Trump directed his administration to use the wartime powers to deport Venezuelan citizens over 14 years old if they are Tren de Aragua members. Cerna is the Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations for ICE in Harlingen, Texas.
Over the weekend, a federal judge in Washington, D.C., ordered the deportations blocked, telling the administration during a hearing to bring back any planes already in the air carrying deportees. The Trump administration sent more than 200 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador anyway, raising questions about whether the White House violated the court ruling. The Justice Department has denied the government defied U.S. District Judge James Boasberg's written orders.
READ MORE: Trump deports hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members. Did he defy a court order?
Cerna said the lack of information the government has on the deported Venezuelans 'demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete file.' Neither Cerna nor the federal government has released any evidence publicly on the criminal and personal history of the deported Venezuelans. The ICE official described how the agency had determined their personal and criminal backgrounds and shared details of charges, arrests, and convictions without identifying specific people.
He indicated that ICE databases showed that 'numerous' individuals had been arrested during federal gang operations or had criminal histories in the U.S. That includes allegations of murder for one individual as well as arrests and charges for aggravated assault with a weapon, drug possession, and sex crimes. He also said several of the individuals had been under investigation for kidnapping, drug trafficking, murder, and other serious crimes in Venezuela and elsewhere.
ICE 'carefully vetted' the individuals through court records, surveillance, law enforcement encounters, interviews, victim testimonies, criminal evidence members, financial transactions, computer checks, and confessions of membership, Cerna said. He said the agency did not rely solely on social media, photos of gang gestures and tattoos to link people to the Tren de Aragua gang.
U.S. authorities have linked some tattoos to Tren de Aragua, but experts say that Tren de Aragua members don't have any specific tattoos tied to affiliation.
Attorneys and immigration advocates say that the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is unlawful and that the Venezuelans were entitled to due process and the opportunity to show a judge that they do not belong to Tren de Aragua.
Families of three men who appear to have been deported and imprisoned in El Salvador told the Miami Herald that their relatives have no gang affiliation – and two said their relatives had never been charged with a crime in the U.S. or elsewhere. One has been previously accused by the U.S. government of ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, but his family denies any connection.
Heated court proceedings
On Monday Judge Boasberg asked the administration for more details about the deportation flights during a hearing on Monday. The Justice Department did not answer questions, citing national security.
Cerna claimed in another sworn statement that the passengers on a third flight to El Salvador had final orders of removal and had not been solely deported under the wartime authority.
READ MORE: Judge orders DOJ lawyers to justify secrecy around El Salvador deportations: reports
On Tuesday, Trump called Boesberg 'a radical left lunatic of a judge, a troublemaker, and an agitator' on social media. He called for the long-time federal judge's impeachment, prompting an extraordinary admonishment from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
In a statement, the chief justice said that 'for more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.' Roberts, who was appointed to the high court by President George W. Bush, said 'the normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.'
Lawyers and experts have warned that Trump's public lashing of Boesberg and his potential defiance of the court order constitute an attack on checks and balances, a key tenet of American democracy that keeps the three branches of government accountable to each other.
'The Trump administration's decisions this weekend are part and parcel of a campaign of mass deportation and evisceration of rule of law,' said Hannah Flamm, an attorney and acting senior policy director at the International Refugee Assistance Project, a New York-based legal aid and advocacy group.
The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times before, all during times of war. The last time it was used led to the internment of Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese descent in U.S. camps during World War II.