Latest news with #Tecoluca
CTV News
4 days ago
- Politics
- CTV News
Judge says migrants sent to El Salvador prison must get a chance to challenge their removals
Prisoners look out of their cell as Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center in Tecoluca, El Salvador, March 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must give more than 100 migrants sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador a chance to challenge their deportations. U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven't been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges. The judge wrote that 'significant evidence' has surfaced indicating that many of the migrants imprisoned in El Salvador are not connected to the gang 'and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.' Boasberg gave the administration one week to come up with a manner in which the 'at least 137' people can make those claims, even while they're formally in the custody of El Salvador. It's the latest milestone in the monthslong legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center. After Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in March and prepared to fly planeloads of accused gang members to El Salvador and out of the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, Boasberg ordered them to turn the planes around. This demand was ignored. Boasberg has found probably cause that the administration committed contempt of court after the flight landed. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted a taunting message on social media — reposted by some of Trump's top aides — that read 'Oopsie, too late.' The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that anyone targeted under the AEA has the right to appeal to a judge to contest their designation as an enemy of the state. Boasberg, in his latest, ruling wrote that he was simply applying that principle to those who'd been removed. Boasberg said the administration 'plainly deprived' the immigrants of a chance to challenge their removals before they were put on flights. Therefore, he says the government must handle the migrants cases now as if they 'would have been if the Government had not provided constitutionally inadequate process.' The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The administration and its supporters have targeted Boasberg for his initial order halting deportations and his contempt inquiry, part of their growing battle with the judiciary as it puts the brakes on Trump's efforts to unilaterally remake government. The fight has been particularly harsh in the realm of immigration, where Trump has repeatedly said it'd be impossible to protect the country from dangerous immigrants if each one has his or her day in court. 'We cannot give everyone a trial!' the president posted on his social media site, Truth Social, after the Supreme Court intervened a second time in the AEA saga, halting a possible effort to evade its initial ruling by temporarily freezing deportations from northern Texas. Boasberg wrote that he accepted the administration's declaration, filed under seal, providing details of the government's deal with El Salvador to house deportees and how that means the Venezuelans are technically under the legal control of El Salvador and not the United States. He added, while noting there is a criminal penalty for providing false testimony, that believing those representations was 'rendered more difficult given the Government's troubling conduct throughout this case.' He also noted parallels with another case where the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported a Maryland man to El Salvador and has been ordered by a judge, appellate judges and the U.S. Supreme Court to 'facilitate' his return. That man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, remains in El Salvador more than two months later. ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt welcomed Boasberg's ruling. 'This is a significant step forward to getting these men the chance to show that they should not ever have been removed under a wartime authority,' Gelernt told reporters in San Diego after a hearing in an unrelated case. Boasberg's order is only the latest of a blizzard of legal rulings in the sprawling AEA case. Several judges have temporarily halted deportations under the act in parts of Texas, New York, California, Pennsylvania and elsewhere, finding the administration's 24 hour window that it gave detainees to challenge their designation under the act did not meet the Supreme Court's requirement of providing a 'reasonable' chance to seek relief. Deportations of people in the country illegally can continue in those areas under laws other than the AEA, Some of the judges in those cases have also found that Trump cannot use the act to target a criminal gang rather than a state, noting that the act has only been invoked three prior times in history — during the War of 1812 and during World Wars I and II. The Supreme Court will likely eventually decide those issues. The Trump administration contends that the gang is acting as a shadow arm of Venezuela's government. Riccardi reported from Denver. Alanna Durkin Richer in Washington, D.C. contributed to this report. Nicholas Riccardi And Lindsay Whitehurst, The Associated Press
Daily Mail
10-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Deported 'Tren de Aragua gangsters' scream in distress in first video from inside El Salvador prison
The first video from inside El Salvador's notorious CECOT prison shows newly deported Tren de Aragua-accused migrants hollering from their cells. The scene unfolded as US representatives toured the facility with the country's president, Nayib Bukele. Video shows the caged men shouting and screaming as Reps Andy Ogles, Vicente Gonzalez, Anna Paulina Luna as well as former congressman Matt Gaetz made their way through. 'I saw evil today. I will never forget it,' Luna said of her visit. 'I heard a story of a MS-13 admitting to watching an infant being murdered. 'I watched and listened to another member of MS-13 admit to murdering over 50 people. 'I saw murderers. Recruited as young boys and as boys their souls and humanity was crushed. Forcing them to commit murder as a way of blooding in. 'The Dems in congress advocating for this need to STOP. Some of these MEN were illegally in MD, MA, VA, TX, etc. multiple times deported.' Other footage showed her sampling a typical meal given to the inmates - burgers and fries. CECOT houses some of El Salvador's most hardened criminals and has a capacity for 40,000 inmates. The prison in Tecoluca, which opened in 2023, is a sprawling complex and a symbol of Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele's harsh crackdown on gang violence. Buekele struck a $6 million deal with the US to house accused migrants in the prison, which is known as a 'black hole of human rights'. For the strongman president of El Salvador the deal with the US is an opportunity to show the world the brutal efficacy of his repressive 'State of Exception' regime - an excess of the growing autocratic trend turning its back on liberal democracy. At least 363 people have died in Salvadoran prisons since the policy came into effect, prisoner rights group Cristosal told MailOnline, citing 'horrific overcrowding, disease, systematic denial of food, clothing medicine, and basic hygiene'. The jewel in the crown, CECOT has been heralded by Bukele as a superweapon in the war on gang violence. Confined to cells of 70 for all but 30 minutes a day, prisoners are held in dire conditions, forbidden from going outside or having visitors, and are made to sleep on steel cots without mattresses in cramped conditions. It has recently become home to hundreds of alleged Tren de Aragua members who had been residing in the US. The prison has recently become home to hundreds of alleged Tren de Aragua members who had been residing in the US They were deported as part of the president's immigration crackdown. Between February and March, 13,300 migrants were deported, according to NBC's tracker. The policy has caused some backlash after some of the migrants removed to El Salvador claimed they had been falsely accused. Testimony emerged about migrants being rounded up on the basis of sporting tattoos similar to those adopted by the prison gang or other flimsy so-called evidence. The deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father who has been in the states since 2011, caused a huge controversy after the Department of Homeland Security admitted he had been deported in error. Garcia has no criminal convictions in the US or in El Salvador and strongly refutes the allegation that he is part of Tren de Aragua. An immigration judge had also previously ruled that he could not be sent home due to persecution by the gang. But Trump officials have refused to back down even as the highest courts in the country ordered his return to the US. The president raised more eyebrows this week when he unveiled plans to suspending habeas corpus, the constitutional right of a person to challenge their detention in court, as part of his sweeping immigration crackdown. 'The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion,' White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters. 'So it's an option we're actively looking at,' Miller said. 'A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.' Federal judges have so far been skeptical of the Trump administration's past efforts to use extraordinary powers to make deportations easier. Trump argued in March that the U.S. was facing an 'invasion' of Venezuelan gang members and evoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a wartime authority he has tried to use to speed up mass deportations. Federal courts around the country, including in New York, Colorado, Texas and Pennsylvania, have since blocked the administration's uses of the Alien Enemies Act for many reasons, including amid questions about whether the country is truly facing an invasion.
