Judge says US must help bring back a handful of Venezuelans deported to notorious prison

A federal judge on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to make arrangements to allow some of the Venezuelan migrants deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador to return to the U.S. at the government’s expense.

The case has been a legal flashpoint in the administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown. It started in March after President Donald Trump invoked the 18th century Alien Enemies Act to send Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.

In Thursday’s ruling, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington criticized the White House’s response to his earlier order that it come up with a plan to give the men a chance to challenge their removals.

“Apparently not interested in participating in this process, the Government’s responses essentially told the Court to pound sand,” Boasberg wrote. Nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, the judge has repeatedly clashed with the administration over the deportations.

An email to the White House was not immediately returned.

The 137 men were later returned to Venezuela in a prisoner exchange brokered by the United States.

Lee Gelernt, their attorney in the U.S., said at a court hearing on Monday that plaintiffs’ attorneys are in touch with a handful of them who have since managed to leave Venezuela and are now in a third country. These men are interested in clearing their names, he said.

Boasberg’s order says U.S. officials must provide the men in third countries who wish to fly back to U.S. with a boarding letter. The government must also cover their airfare. He noted the men would be detained upon their return.

Those men and the migrants who remain in Venezuela can also file new legal documents arguing the presidential proclamation under which they were deported illegally invoked the 18th century wartime law, the judge ruled. The legal filings can also challenge their designation as members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

Boasberg said he could decide later whether to require hearings and how to conduct them, but it was up to the government to “remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so.”

“Were it otherwise, the Government could simply remove people from the United States without providing any process and then, once they were in a foreign country, deny them any right to return for a hearing or opportunity to present their case from abroad,” he wrote.

In March, Trump officials flew the Venezuelan men to the prison, despite a verbal order from Boasberg for the aircraft to turn around. Boasberg subsequently started a contempt investigation, though the dramatic battle between the judicial and executive branches has been paused by an appeals court.

The administration has denied violating his order.

Gelernt said in a statement on Thursday Boasberg had “begun the process of giving these men their right to challenge their removal.”

“Remarkably, although the government does not dispute the men were denied due process, it still was not willing to do what was right without a court order,” he said.