Latest news with #TerrorismConfinementCenter
CTV News
2 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
2 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Migrants sent to notorious El Salvador prison must get a chance to challenge their deportation, judge rules
A federal judge Donald Trump has called a Barack Obama-appointed radical ruled Wednesday that the White House must give migrants sent to an El Salvador prison a chance to challenge their removals. 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 said he was simply applying that principle to those who'd been removed. The judge 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.' In a remarkable passage, 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. But, he said, believing those representations was 'rendered more difficult given the Government´s troubling conduct throughout this case.' He noted the Supreme Court had to act again in the saga, to halt an apparent effort to get around that requirement with a late-night flight from Texas in April. 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. has reached out to the White House for comment.
Yahoo
04-02-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump backs jailing Americans in El Salvador if has 'legal right'
President Donald Trump on Tuesday backed an offer by El Salvador to take in prisoners -- including US citizens -- despite clear legal problems with such an outsourcing under American law. "If we had the legal right to do it, I would do it in a heartbeat," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. "It's no different than our prison system, except it would be a lot less expensive, and it would be a great deterrent," Trump said. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele, who has carried out a sweeping crackdown on crime, offered the use of a maximum-security prison, Latin America's largest, when he met Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday. Rubio said Tuesday that the Trump administration would review the proposal but acknowledged legal issues. "We'll have to study it on our end. There are obviously legalities involved," Rubio told reporters a day afterward in Costa Rica, where he headed after El Salvador. "We have a constitution, we have all sorts of things, but it's a very generous offer," Rubio said. The US Constitution forbids "cruel and unusual punishment" and promises due process. There is little precedent in modern times for a democratic country to send its own citizens to foreign prisons. Rubio again welcomed the offer by Bukele, saying, "No one's ever made an offer like that." - 'They could keep them' - Bukele said that El Salvador wanted to give the United States a chance to "outsource part of its prison system." He said he would negotiate payment, which would decrease costs for the United States but help fund El Salvador's own mass incarceration. Trump said that shipping criminals to El Salvador would be "a very small fee compared to what we pay to private prisons." "Frankly, they could keep them, because these people are never going to be any good," Trump said. It would be a sharp break with historical practice for the United States not to take back its own citizens. The United States under successive administrations has pushed European allies to take back their citizens who fought for the Islamic State extremist group, in hopes of ending long-term imprisonment in Syria. Trump has sought to end the principle that everyone born in the United States is a citizen, which is enshrined in the Constitution. Most European nations have more leeway in revoking citizenship. Bukele has carried a sweeping crackdown on crime that includes rounding up people without warrants. He last year opened the "Terrorism Confinement Center," or CECOT, where he has now offered to jail Americans. Designed to house 40,000 inmates, the vast prison lies behind huge concrete walls on the edge of a jungle, with inmates allowed out of their cells only for 30 minutes a day of exercise and for virtual court appointments. Bukele has faced criticism from human rights groups but enjoys sky-high approval ratings from a public grateful for the sharp reduction of crime in what was once one of the world's most violent countries. Bukele, who has courted American conservatives, has offered to jail not just Americans but nationals from third countries, along with Salvadorans. Trump quickly after taking office stripped roughly 600,000 Venezuelans in the United States of protection from deportation. Trump's predecessor Joe Biden had refused to deport them due to the security and economic crises in Venezuela, led by leftist Nicolas Maduro. Some 232,000 Salvadorans enjoy similar protections in the United States which Trump has not touched. The Trump administration has also begun to fly detained migrants to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. burs-sct/
Associated Press
04-02-2025
- Politics
- Associated Press
What to know about El Salvador's mega-prison after Trump deal to send people there
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — The Trump administration and the president of El Salvador said Monday that they'd struck a deal allowing the U.S. to ship both detained migrants and imprisoned citizens to the tiny Central American nation, which has suspended some basic rights as it battles powerful street gangs. The U.S. government cannot deport American citizens and said Tuesday that 'there are obviously legalities involved. ' 'We have a Constitution,' he acknowledged. 'But it's a very generous offer ... obviously, the administration will have to make a decision.' Bukele has made El Salvador's stark, harsh prisons a trademark of his aggressive fight against crime. Since March 2022, more than 84,000 people have been arrested, many with little to no due process. Even before the campaign against gangs, El Salvador's prisons were notoriously violent and overcrowded but the crown jewel of Bukele's fight is the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, he opened in 2023. In slickly produced videos, prisoners in boxer shorts are marched into prison yards and made to sit nearly atop each other. They are packed into cells without enough bunks for everyone. At the time, Bukele tweeted: 'El Salvador has managed to go from being the world's most dangerous country, to the safest country in the Americas. How did we do it? By putting criminals in jail. Is there space? There is now.' Even before his announcement with Rubio, Bukele had planned to put more people in prison. What is the CECOT? Bukele ordered the mega-prison built as he began his campaign against El Salvador's gangs in March 2022. It opened a year later in the town of Tecoluca, about 45 miles east of the capital. Able to hold 40,000 inmates, the CECOT is made up of eight sprawling pavilions. Its cells hold 65 to 70 prisoners each. They do not receive visits. There are no programs preparing them to return to society after their sentences, no workshops or educational programs. They are never allowed outside. The exceptions are occasional motivational talks from prisoners who have gained a level of trust from prison officials. Prisoners sit in rows in the corridor outside their cells for the talks or are led through exercise regimens under the supervision of guards. Bukele's justice minister has said that those held would never return to their communities. The prison's dining halls, break rooms, gym and board games are for guards. How many prisoners does El Salvador hold? In April 2021, a year before the start of the state of emergency, the government reported nearly 36,000 prisoners. The government doesn't regularly update the figure but the human rights organization Cristosal reported that in March 2024 El Salvador — population 6.36 million — held 110,000 people, including those sentenced to prison and those still awaiting trial. ——
