US civil organizations question the deportation of Venezuelans

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the main organization of US civil rights defense, has indicated on Monday to the White House for breaching an order of federal judge James Boasberg that prohibited deportations of Venezuelans by applying the law of foreign enemies, a rule of 1798.

The US president, Donald Trump, has signed this weekend an executive order that invoked the war powers mentioned in this law to quickly deport anyone suspected of belonging to the Venezuelan criminal group of Aragua.

The process does not allow audiences, so it could cause generalized deportations of Venezuelans without demonstrating any relationship with the Aragua train, according to civil rights organizations.

Judge Boasberg has provisionally blocked the executive order, but the Trump administration has maintained at least two deportation flights, denounce groups like ACLU. Specifically, they point out that the court order “unequivocally” the return of the planes and demands the Executive to demonstrate compliance.

“According to the information available publicly, it seems that there were at least two flights that took off during the hearing, but landed even after the written order of this court, which means that the defendants could have changed the plane without delivering the people,” said the ACLU in a statement.

“Although the airplanes had left the United States territory, their authorities retain custody at least until airplanes terrify and give individuals to foreign governments,” he argued.

The White House has rejected the accusation and has suggested that Boasberg has no authority in this matter despite the fact that the courts usually investigate the immigration policy.

“The administration was not ‘denied to comply with a court order. The order, which did not have a legal basis, was issued after terrorists according to the foreign enemies law had already been withdrawn from US territory. The written order and the actions of the administration do not conflict,” he stressed, according to the US press.

In addition, the White House emphasizes that “as the Supreme Court has repeatedly made clear: the federal courts generally have no jurisdiction on the conduct of the president in foreign affairs, their competitions under the law of foreign enemies and its main powers of article II to eliminate foreign terrorists of American soil and repel an invasion declared,” said spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt in X.

“Very dangerous land”

One of the Aclu lawyers, Lee Gellnt, has warned that the administration moves in “a very dangerous land.” “The federal courts have the competence and the duty to monitor what the Executive Power does if it breaches the Lay. And that exactly what is happening. It is a case of separation of powers in short,” he said in a message posted on social networks.

In addition, he recalled that Congress gave these powers to the president “more than 200 years ago.” It was only used three times: in the War of 1812, in World War I and in World War II. “It is an exclusive presidential competence and only if there is a foreign government, a foreign country, if a war has been declared. That is not what is happening here, so the president has exceeded his powers,” he said.

For Gelernt, federal courts must be able to review whether the Law of Foreign Enemies is being used illegally and has also advanced that they have requested sworn statements about whether the opinion of the federal judge has been breached by not going around the two planes. “Everything indicates that they have breached the court order,” he said.

The most serious is the use of war powers in peacetime. “How much we begin to use times of war in the time of peace, we get into a very slippery field, a very dangerous land,” warned the A ACLU lawyer, which has also denounced the use of the Guantanamo military base, in Cuba, to enclose immigrants.

Deportations have been criticized by the Venezuelan government and also by some opposition voices, such as Andrés Caleca or Ramón Guillermo Aveledo.

“The persecution, imprisonment and deportation of Venezuelans in the USA without due process, stigmatized by its origin, without more, is an aberration that cannot be indifferent. The condemnation and I sympathize with my compatriots, submitted today to an unthinkable tenza,” Caleca published in his account in the social network X.

Aveledo, on the other hand, has questioned the lack of legal guarantees to deport Venezuelans to the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT) of El Salvador, where they will remain at least one year, according to an agreement between the White House and the Nayib Bukele government.

First Justice leader Juan Pablo Guanipa has stood out while most Venezuelans abroad are people of peace and workers. “The Aragua train is a criminal organization led by Maduro’s regime. That is a reality. As is also an immense reality that the vast majority of Venezuelans abroad are working people who only want to live a life in peace. Let us remember that the common enemy of the free world is (Nicolás) Maduro, not the Venezuelan people. And the best way to neutralize the train of Aragua is to leave Maduro,” he argued. Other opposition figures such as María Corina Machado or Edmundo González have not commented on these information.