Donald Trump‘s administration is preparing to deport a new group of Venezuelan men detained in Texas, said the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in an emergency Friday court filing. ACLU lawyers urged the Supreme Court to block the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to justify sending migrants to El Salvador‘s notorious prison system known for torture, extrajudicial killings, and other human rights abuses.
Migrants have already been placed on buses “presumably headed to the airport” and are at risk of being deported to prison in El Salvador, read the emergency application. Last month, the government sent 238 men to El Salvador without due process, citing dubious claims that the men had ties to gangs that the president has deemed terrorist organizations. CBS’ 60 Minutes released a report that found 75 percent of the Venezuelans — 179 men — deported had no apparent criminal record.
Attorneys for the ACLU also filed similar requests for immediate intervention with the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C.
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could continue deporting migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law from 1798. All nine justices agreed, however, that anyone the administration is seeking to deport under the act must receive notice and be given the opportunity to challenge the removal through “habeas petitions” — meaning that migrants have the right to have their detention or deportation reviewed by the federal court, but only for themselves and in the area where they are being detained.
In Friday’s emergency filing, the ACLU said that Venezuelan migrants currently in custody in Texas were given notices that they were subject to removal under the act and could be deported as soon as Friday or Saturday. The government’s “lightning-fast timeline” does not give the Venezuelan migrants “a realistic opportunity to contest their removal under the AEA,” argued the application, which also said that some of the notices were in “English only” and “do not inform proposed class members of their right to contest the designation in a federal court.” As far as the migrants in government custody and their attorneys know, “the government is not giving notice to proposed class members’ immigration attorneys,” stated the filing.
The ACLU said that any imminent deportations without proper legal review would be “in direct contravention” of the April 7 order from the Supreme Court.
Boasberg declined to issue an order late Friday blocking deportations from northern Texas, saying he lacks the authority to issue a nationwide order after the high court tossed his order earlier this month.
Trump and his administration have continued to defy court orders, in what legal scholars have warned is escalating to a constitutional crisis. After the Department of Homeland Security admitted that it had wrongfully deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a Salvadoran prison mega-prison due to an “administrative error,” a district court judge ordered the Trump administration return him to the U.S.
The Supreme Court, noting that Abrego Garcia’s deportation was “illegal,” unanimously upheld that court order and directed the administration to “facilitate” his release and return to America. Trump and his administration have refused to comply, arguing the court didn’t say that and that they don’t have to do anything because Abrego Garcia is in the custody of El Salvador.
Trump’s administration sought to halt the lower court’s order with an appeal, but were quickly shut down by a three-judge panel on Thursday.
The judges wrote that Trump officials are “asserting a right to stash away residents of this country in foreign prisons without the semblance of due process that is the foundation of our constitutional order,” adding that his administration “claims in essence that because it has rid itself of custody that there is nothing that can be done. This should be shocking not only to judges, but to the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.”
On Wednesday, Boasberg ruled that the administration’s “willful and knowing” actions — and their stonewalling during subsequent hearings in his court — constitute “probable cause for a finding of contempt.” (That ruling was temporarily halted by an appeals court.)
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