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Washington Post
6 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
Lawyers for Venezuelan migrants seek their return to U.S. after prison release
A lawyer for scores of Venezuelan migrants freed last week from a Salvadoran prison and returned to their home country told a federal judge Thursday that the Trump administration should allow them back into the United States. But the Justice Department did not commit to doing so, telling Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington that the administration would permit their return 'if there is a lawful order.'
Yomiuri Shimbun
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Yomiuri Shimbun
El Salvador Says for First Time That U.S. Controls Fate of Jailed Deportees
Salvadoran officials have said for the first time that more than 130 Venezuelan migrants who have been detained for months in a megaprison in El Salvador remain under the responsibility of the United States, according to a court document filed Monday. The acknowledgment was contained in a filing by the migrants lawyers in U.S. District Court in the District of Columbia. It marks a significant contradiction to the Trump administration's repeated claims that it lacked the authority to bring back the migrants because they are no longer in U.S. custody. The court document included the Salvadoran government's response to a United Nations inquiry on behalf of four families, the lawyers said, who have claimed that a relative was forcibly disappeared when the Trump administration secretly sent them from U.S. immigration detention centers to the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT, in mid-March. The Trump administration, which is paying the Salvadoran government $6 million to house the migrants for a year, has not released a list of the people who were sent to the prison that day. In the filing submitted to U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, the Salvadoran government deferred responsibility for the relatives of the four families – and other migrants in their custody – to the Trump administration. 'The jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these people lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities,' the Salvadoran authorities said, according to the document. 'El Salvador said out loud what everyone knew: The United States is in charge of the Venezuelans shipped off in the middle of the night back in March,' said Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer and lead counsel in the case. The Department of Homeland Security and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment. The legal case focuses on the Trump administration's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old law that allows the government to circumvent legal due process for non-U. S. citizens who it determines are a national security threat and remove them from the country. That law has previously been invoked exclusively during times of war. The Trump administration has argued that the migrants deported under the statute are members of the Venezuela-based gang 'Tren de Aragua,' and asserted the gang is carrying out an 'invasion' in the United States at the direction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. U.S. intelligence agencies, however, have determined that Maduro is not directing the gang. In the court filing, the ACLU and its co-counsel, Democracy Forward Foundation, allege that the Trump administration was aware of the Salvadoran government's statements to the United Nations and chose not to share the information with the court because U.S. officials are copied in the Salvadoran responses, which are dated in April. 'The documents filed with the court today show that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people,' said Skye Perryman, chief executive and president of Democracy Forward. Federal courts in several states have temporarily halted deportations in their jurisdictions under the Alien Enemies Act. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit heard arguments in the case and appeared ready to back the Trump administration's authority to invoke the law – potentially sending the case back to the U.S. Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has previously ruled that migrants deemed subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act be given sufficient time to legally contest their removal, but it has not ruled on whether Trump's invocation of the law is legal. Last week, U.S. District Judge Randolph D. Moss said the Trump's Jan. 20 proclamation declaring an invasion on the border cannot be used to prevent migrants from applying for asylum. The Trump administration has brought back one migrant it sent to the Salvadoran prison: Kilmar Abrego García, a citizen of El Salvador, who was deported despite a court order preventing his removal. Administration officials called the move an administrative error but initially said it was unable to bring him back. He was transferred back to the United States last month and charged with human smuggling. He has pleaded not guilty.
Toronto Star
08-05-2025
- Politics
- Toronto Star
Judge seeks more information from Trump administration about prison deal with El Salvador
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday said he'll order the Trump administration to provide more information about the terms under which dozens of Venezuelan immigrants are being held at a notorious prison in El Salvador, moving a step closer to deciding whether to require the men to be returned to the United States. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg said he needed the information to determine whether the roughly 200 men, deported in March under an 18th century wartime law, were still effectively in U.S. custody. Boasberg noted that President Donald Trump had boasted in an interview that he could get back one man wrongly imprisoned in El Salvador in a separate case by simply asking. The government's lawyer, Abishek Kambli, said that and other public statements by administration officials about their relationship with El Salvador lacked 'nuance.'
Newsweek
07-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Judge Boasberg Gives Trump Admin New Directive in Deportations Case
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg said Wednesday that he will order the Trump administration to disclose more details about the conditions under which dozens of Venezuelan immigrants are being held at a notorious prison in El Salvador. The move brings the court closer to determining whether the men should be brought back to the United States. Judge Boasberg said the information is essential to assess whether the approximately 200 men — deported in March under the Alien Enemies Act, a seldom-used 18th-century wartime law — remain under effective U.S. custody. The legal question hinges on the extent of control the U.S. government still exerts over the detainees. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, March 16, 2023. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, chief judge of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, stands for a portrait at E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse in Washington, March 16, 2023. Associated Press This is a developing news story and will be updated as more information is available. Reporting by the Associated Press contributed to this story.
New York Times
25-04-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Lawyers Seek Return of Migrants Deported Under Wartime Act
Over the past two weeks, immigration lawyers, scrambling from courthouse to courthouse, have secured provisional orders in five different states stopping the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a terrorism prison in El Salvador. Judges have been harsh in appraising how the White House has used the powerful statute. 'Cows have better treatment now under the law,' a federal judge in Manhattan said on Tuesday. But at least so far, the one thing the lawyers have not managed to do is protect another — and harder to reach — group of Venezuelan migrants: about 140 men who are already in El Salvador, having been deported there under the act more than a month ago. Early Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union took another shot at seeking due process for those men. Lawyers for the group filed an updated version of a lawsuit they brought against President Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act on March 15, the first that challenged his invocation of the law. This time, the A.C.L.U. is asking a federal judge in Washington not to stop the men from being sent to El Salvador, but rather to help them return to U.S. soil. When the A.C.L.U. filed its initial version of the suit, in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge James E. Boasberg issued an immediate order telling the administration to hold off sending any planes of Venezuelans to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act and to turn around any flights that were already in the air. But that never happened. The administration's inaction ultimately resulted in a threat by Judge Boasberg to begin a contempt investigation into whether Trump officials violated his original instructions — and now the updated lawsuit. Altogether, the A.C.L.U. has filed at least seven lawsuits in seven federal courts across the country, challenging Mr. Trump's proclamation on March 14 invoking the Alien Enemies Act as one of the central tools of his aggressive deportation agenda. The suits have homed in on two different but related legal issues. One is a significant procedural question: whether the Trump administration has provided migrants whom officials have asserted are subject to removal under the law with sufficient time and opportunity to challenge their deportations in court. In a court filing unsealed on Thursday in an A.C.L.U. case in Texas, a top federal immigration official said that the administration had decided that 'a reasonable amount of time' for migrants to express their desire to challenge deportations could be as little as 12 hours. The official said that migrants could have at least another day to file their challenges in court. The other issue the A.C.L.U. has been exploring is more substantive: whether the White House should be allowed to use the act at all against the Venezuelan migrants. The act, which was passed in 1798, is supposed to be invoked only in times of declared war or military invasion against members of a hostile foreign nation. Trump officials have repeatedly argued that the Venezuelans they are trying to deport are members of a criminal gang called Tren de Aragua and that their presence in the United States amounts to an invasion supported by the Venezuelan government. But that view has been rejected not only by some U.S. intelligence officials, but also by an increasing number of judges considering the A.C.L.U.'s lawsuits. On Tuesday, for example, during a hearing in Federal District Court in Manhattan, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein blasted Mr. Trump's use of the statute, saying it was 'contrary to law.' Several times, Judge Hellerstein, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, said he believed that Mr. Trump was using the law in inappropriate ways. He noted in particular that the law did not authorize the government 'to hire a jail in a foreign country where people could be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment not allowable in the United States jails.' When Tiberius Davis, a lawyer for the Justice Department took issue with that view, Judge Hellerstein shot him down. 'Your Honor, respectfully, once they've already been removed, they're not in United States custody,' Mr. Davis said. 'That's El Salvador. They're a separate foreign sovereign.' 'That's exactly the point,' Judge Hellerstein said. Another judge, Charlotte N. Sweeney, issued a ruling this week in Federal District Court in Denver determining that Mr. Trump's proclamation had improperly stretched the meaning of terms like 'war' and 'invasion' in a way that ran counter to the actual text of the Alien Enemies Act. 'Because the act's 'text and history' use these terms 'to refer to military actions indicative of an actual or impending war' — not 'mass illegal migration' or 'criminal activities' — the act cannot sustain the proclamation,' she wrote. While the Supreme Court has not weighed in yet on the broad issue of whether the White House is using the statute properly, the court has made a decision on the procedural question of whether Trump officials have given migrants subject to the law due process. Deciding they had not, the justices ruled in an order on April 7 that the Venezuelan migrants must be warned in advance if the government intends to deport them under the Alien Enemies Act so they can challenge them in court, but only in the places where they were being detained. The justices have not yet laid out their vision of how much — or what type of — warning the migrants should receive. Still, the A.C.L.U. is using that ruling in its updated lawsuit filed in Washington in tandem with a second Supreme Court decision handed down in a different deportation case. In that decision, the justices determined that the White House had to 'facilitate' the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from Salvadoran custody after officials wrongfully deported him last month in violation of an earlier court order that expressly barred him from being sent to the country. Lawyers for the A.C.L.U. have sought in essence to merge both of these rulings into a single tool to demand not only that the Trump administration provide the nearly 140 Venezuelans in Salvadoran custody with some way of challenging their circumstances, but also that officials take active steps toward securing their release, since they were not previously given the opportunity to do so. The lawyers have argued, moreover, that it is appropriate to challenge the deportations in front of Judge Boasberg in Washington even though that is not where the men are currently being held. They say that Washington is the proper venue for legal actions when prisoners are in custody overseas. But even if this strategy is successful, it could be difficult to force the administration to actually take steps to get the men released from Salvadoran custody. Mr. Abrego Garcia, for example, remains in El Salvador two weeks after the Supreme Court ordered the White House to help secure his freedom.
