ACLU moves to block more Venezuelan detainee removals

Arguing that the Trump administration was busing dozens of Venezuelan men to an airport in Texas to be deported, the ACLU asked multiple courts on Friday to temporarily stop the removal of dozens of detainees accused under a wartime law of being foreign gang members.

By Friday night at least one judge, U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington, D.C., denied the request, saying it was beyond his authority. Requests to the U.S. Supreme Court and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit in New Orleans are pending.

Drew C. Ensign, a lawyer for the U.S. Department of Justice, told Boasberg that there were no current plans to deport individuals Friday or Saturday by plane presumably to El Salvador, but the Trump administration reserved the right to remove people on Saturday.

The ACLU asked the courts for an emergency order after Venezuelan detainees from across the country, including California, were transferred to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, and, according to their filings, told they will be removed as soon as Friday night.

The Trump administration flew hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants deemed members of Tren de Aragua last month to El Salvador, where they are being held in a notorious mega-prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center. Families of many of the men sent to El Salvador on the earlier planes say they are not gang members.

The deportations kicked off a high-stakes legal battle testing the limits of President Trump’s deportation plans and his power.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled earlier this month that the wartime authority invoked by the administration could resume, but immigrants must be given proper notice and a chance to make their case in places where they were being detained.

Boasberg, who had heard the earlier case about the administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, had ordered a temporary halt to removals. But despite the order, deportation planes were sent to El Salvador, where more than 200 people remain in prison.

The Trump administration has said that once individuals are outside of U.S. jurisdiction, there is little they can do to bring them back to the United States.

“If these people are removed to a foreign prison, perhaps for the rest of their lives, without any due process, it would be in clear violation of the Supreme Court’s opinion,” Lee Gelerent, ACLU attorney leading the case, said in an interview Friday.

The case began in a Texas federal court earlier in the week, when the ACLU asked Judge Wesley Hendrix to temporarily stop any removal on behalf of two individuals because they didn’t have a chance to challenge their cases.

Hendrix denied the request. By Friday, lawyers learned of more individuals being held and asked again, after reports circulated that removals were imminent. When lawyers didn’t get a response that afternoon, they sought help from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th District and asked the Supreme Court to step in.

ACLU lawyers argued that the move was necessary because officials at Bluebonnet told detainees they will be deported and asked them to sign notices of removal in English based on their alleged affiliation with Tren de Aragua.

One man at the facility sent his wife a TikTok video depicting various detainees, according to a declaration submitted by ACLU lawyers from Michelle Brané, executive director of a nonprofit that provides services for asylum seekers. In it, one young man says they are all being labeled as members of Tren de Aragua. They aren’t allowed to call their families, and the detainees don’t know where they will be removed to, he says in the video.

“They’re saying we have to be removed, quickly, because we are a terrorist threat to the country,” he says.

Another detainee says they were given a paper to sign but were told that, whether they signed or not, they would be removed from the country.

A third detainee says, “We are not members of Tren de Aragua. We are normal, civil people.” A fourth says, “I don’t have a deportation order. I have all my paperwork in order. I have my American children here. I was brought here illegally. I was arrested with no arrest warrant and they want me deported.”