Judge orders Donald Trump to grant a hearing to nearly 200 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador

The judge also certified a class action lawsuit, paving the way for all migrants sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) in El Salvador last March to challenge their designation as foreign enemies of the United States.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, used in times of war, to send to El Salvador immigrants whom he accused, without presenting evidence, of belonging to the Aragua Traina transnational criminal gang designated as a terrorist organization.

“This Court declares that the plaintiffs should not have been expelled in the manner in which they were expelled, with virtually no prior notice and no opportunity to challenge the grounds for their expulsion, in clear violation of their due process rights,” the judge wrote in his ruling, which represents a new setback for the Trump Administration.

The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Democracy Forward, which argued that the deportation was illegal and that El Salvador imprisoned the Venezuelans in exchange for payment.

“Expedited removal cannot be allowed to nullify this legal remedy (habeas corpus). If secretly transferring people to another country were enough to nullify habeas corpus, then ‘the Government could kidnap anyone off the street, hand them over to a foreign country, and thus preclude any possibility of legal recourse,'” Boasberg said in his ruling.

The case related to the Alien Enemies Act has put the Trump Administration in the crosshairs for exposing failures in due process, protected by the US Constitution.

After months of pressure from the immigrants’ families, the Venezuelans were sent to their native country last July, in a hostage exchange between the US and the Government of Nicolas Maduro.

Boasberg is also investigating whether Trump administration officials violated a court order he had issued prohibiting deportation flights to El Salvador.

Last November, the judge said he would call at least two people related to the case to testify: Erez Reuveni, a Department of Justice (DOJ) whistleblower who was fired, and Drew Ensign, a lawyer from the same department whom Reuveni accused of misleading the court about the migrant flights, according to information cited by the Washington Post.

In his first opinion of more than 40 pages, the magistrate accused the Executive of having ignored with “complete contempt” a court order that instructed them to reverse the sending of migrants to the Central American country.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of court orders, especially by officials sworn to uphold it,” the judge wrote in his ruling last April.

Due to the sending of immigrants to El Salvador, the White House is also maintaining another judicial battle in the case of Salvadoran Kilmar Ábrego García, who was expelled along with the Venezuelans and was returned to the United States by order of a judge.