Judge orders Trump to let some Venezuelans return from El Salvador prison

Summary

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to arrange for some Venezuelans deported to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador to return to the United States at the government’s expense so they can challenge their removals, according to a court ruling described by the Associated Press.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, in Washington, criticized the White House’s response to his earlier order that required the government to submit a plan giving the men a chance to contest their deportations.

Boasberg said the government’s efforts effectively told the court to disregard the process it had ordered, writing that the responses “essentially told the Court to pound sand.” The judge, a judge appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, has clashed with the administration over the deportations.

The ruling set terms for men who are no longer in Venezuela. Boasberg said U.S. officials must provide the men in third countries who want to fly back to the United States with a boarding letter, and that the government must cover their airfare. He added that the men would be detained upon return.

Boasberg also addressed legal options for the men who remain in Venezuela. He ruled they and other deportees can file new legal documents arguing that the presidential proclamation under which they were deported improperly invoked the 18th century Alien Enemies Act, and they can challenge their designation as members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

The judge said he could decide later whether to require hearings and how to conduct them, but he wrote that it was “up to the government to ‘remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so.’” He said a contrary approach would allow officials to remove people from the United States without a process and then deny them any right to return for a hearing from abroad.

The deportations began in March after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, sending Venezuelan migrants accused of gang ties to CECOT. The Associated Press reported that in March, Trump officials flew the Venezuelan men to the prison despite a verbal order from Boasberg for the aircraft to turn around, which led Boasberg to start a contempt investigation; an appeals court later paused that dispute.

The Associated Press said that the 137 men were later returned to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange brokered by the United States. Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the plaintiffs in the United States, told a court hearing on Monday that plaintiffs’ attorneys were in touch with a handful of the men who had managed to leave Venezuela and were now in a third country, and that those men were interested in clearing their names.

In a statement responding to Boasberg’s Thursday ruling, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said it was “an absurd, unlawful ruling from a far-left judicial activist trying to undermine the President’s lawful authority to carry about deportations.” She said Americans had elected President Trump on his promise to deport criminal illegal aliens and that Boasberg had “no right to stop the will of the American people,” adding that the decision would not be final.

Gelernt said in a statement on Thursday that Boasberg had “begun the process of giving these men their right to challenge their removal,” and he said the government did not dispute the men were denied due process but still had not been willing to do what he described as the right thing without a court order.