A US judge ruled that the Trump administration violated the due-process rights of more than 100 Venezuelans deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, and they must now get a chance to challenge their removal.
US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington found that the purported gang members never got a chance to challenge their designation as “alien enemies” before they were sent on March 15 and 16 to the mega-prison in El Salvador known as CECOT.
Those removed were “entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removability” under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which President Donald Trump invoked hours before deeming them members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The judge said in his Wednesday decision he would decide later how exactly the administration now must provide that notice and opportunity to the Venezuelans.
“Absent this relief, the government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action,” the judge wrote.
The ruling is another setback for the deportation program of Trump, who has been rebuffed twice in recent weeks by the US Supreme Court. Boasberg cited the language of the Supreme Court, which ruled that Venezuelans still facing deportation under the Alien Enemies Act must receive notice that they face removal in “a reasonable time and in such a manner” to bring a legal challenge.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said “fortunately for the American people, Judge Boasberg does not have the last word.”
“Judge Boasberg has no authority to intervene with immigration or national security — authority that rests squarely with President Trump and the executive branch,” Jackson said. “His current and previous attempts to prevent President Trump from deporting criminal illegal aliens poses a direct threat to the safety of the American people.”
Boasberg stopped short of ordering the US to “facilitate” the return of the Venezuelans, as the Supreme Court ordered in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a wrongly deported Salvadoran national sent to CECOT at the same time as the Venezuelans. The Trump administration has spent weeks fighting implementation of that ruling by a federal judge in Maryland.
“Mindful of national-security and foreign-policy concerns, the court will not — at least yet — order the government to take any specific steps,” Boasberg said. “It will instead allow defendants to submit proposals regarding the appropriate actions” to allow the detainees to seek legal relief.
The judge also declined to say that Trump improperly invoked the Alien Enemies Act by saying the Venezuelans were engaged in an invasion or predatory incursion. Several other federal judges said Trump improperly invoked the law, while the Supreme Court has not ruled on that question.
“Perhaps the president lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act,” Boasberg wrote. “Perhaps, moreover, defendants are correct that plaintiffs are gang members. But — and this is the critical point — there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the government’s say-so.”
Instead, the US “spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made,” Boasberg wrote. “And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.”
The judge gave the administration one week to tell him how it would comply with his order.
Boasberg has previously said there is “probable cause” to hold Trump administration officials in criminal contempt of court for sending the Venezuelans to CECOT despite his order to immediately halt the deportations.
“Such defiance is currently the subject of the court’s contempt inquiry,” Boasberg wrote Wednesday.
The case is J.G.G. v. Trump, 25-cv-766, US District Court, District of Columbia.
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