Judge says migrants sent to El Salvador prison must get a chance to challenge their removals

WASHINGTON — A federal judge ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must give more than 100 migrants sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador a chance to challenge their deportations.

U.S. District Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges.

The judge wrote that “significant evidence” has surfaced indicating that many of the migrants imprisoned in El Salvador are not connected to the gang “and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.”

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Boasberg gave the administration one week to come up with a manner in which the “at least 137” people can make those claims, even while they’re formally in the custody of El Salvador. It’s the latest milestone in the months-long legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.

After President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in March and officials prepared to fly planeloads of accused gang members to El Salvador and out of the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, Boasberg ordered them to turn the planes around. This demand was ignored. Boasberg has found probable cause that the administration committed contempt of court after the flight landed. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele posted a taunting message on social media — reposted by some of Trump’s top aides — that read “Oopsie, too late.”

The U.S. Supreme Court later ruled that anyone targeted under the Alien Enemies Act has the right to appeal to a judge to contest their designation as an enemy of the state. Boasberg said he was simply applying that principle to those who had been removed.

Boasberg said the administration “plainly deprived” the immigrants of a chance to challenge their removals before they were put on flights. Therefore, he says the government must handle the migrants cases now as they “would have been if the Government had not provided constitutionally inadequate process.”

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In a remarkable passage, Boasberg wrote that he accepted the administration’s declaration, filed under seal, providing details of the government’s deal with El Salvador to house deportees and how that means the Venezuelans are technically under the legal control of El Salvador and not the United States. But, he said, believing those representations was “rendered more difficult given the Government’s troubling conduct throughout this case.”

He noted the Supreme Court had to act again in the saga, to halt an apparent effort to get around that requirement with a late-night flight from Texas in April. He also noted parallels with another case where the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported a Maryland man to El Salvador and has been ordered by a judge, appellate judges and the Supreme Court to “facilitate” his return.