Boasberg orders Trump to prepare to bring back Venezuelans deported under Alien Enemies Act

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled Monday that the Trump administration must either return or give new hearings to the Venezuelan migrants it sent to El Salvador on three controversial deportation flights in March.

Judge Boasberg, an Obama appointee to the court in Washington who has emerged as a major adversary of President Trump, gave the government until early next month to say what it will do.

The deportations were the first under Mr. Trump’s use of the founding-era Alien Enemies Act — a tool the new administration has seized upon to take a shortcut through the normal, lengthier deportation process for some migrants.

He targeted Venezuelans who he said were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which he said was engaged in an invasion of the U.S. and so its members qualified for AEA deportations.

Judge Boasberg’s new ruling doesn’t question the AEA designation but says each of the deportees should have had a chance to argue he wasn’t a member of the gang, and therefore shouldn’t have been deported under the abbreviated procedures of the 1798 law.

He said it was out of deference to the Executive Branch that he was allowing the administration to pick between setting up hearings for the Venezuelans where they are now — they were sent from El Salvador to Venezuela over the summer — or bringing them back to the U.S. altogether.

“Even if the AEA was properly invoked as a general matter, it is beyond cavil that designated ’alien enemies’ under that act must be afforded some process to contest their designation,” the judge wrote. “Here, plaintiffs received none.”

The Washington Times has sought comment from the Homeland Security Department.

The March 15 flights to El Salvador have proved to be a recurring problem for the administration.

Judge Boasberg is separately pursuing a criminal contempt investigation against the government over his belief that it ignored or violated his orders to ground the three planes.

A federal appeals court has put that investigation on hold.

Some of the migrants on the flights were Salvadorans being returned home. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was among them.

He launched his own legal battle that resulted in a ruling that he be returned. The administration complied, but only after also securing a criminal indictment.

Judges in both the criminal and civil cases have ordered him set free while he waits on the criminal trial and the outcome of the ongoing deportation case against him.

Once in El Salvador, the deportees — both Venezuelan and Salvadoran — were taken to that country’s terrorism prison.

In court declarations, some of those deported said officers from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who flew down with the migrants, beat them to force them off the planes.

Homeland Security has denied those accusations.

The migrants also said they faced beatings and rough treatment at the prison.

But even so, they don’t want to go to Venezuela either, where they say they live in fear after being labeled TdA members.

One of those who claimed to have been beaten by ICE officers on the plane said he was threatened with being accused as a traitor for having left to go to the U.S.

But he said if he tries to go to another country he fears being treated as a terrorist, thanks to the U.S. government’s designation of TdA as a terrorist organization.

“It is very important for me to clear my name. I’m not guilty of what the United States accused me of,” he told Judge Boasberg in a court filing. “I would like the opportunity to prove that to a judge in the United States.”

Another said he has struggled to get a job because of Mr. Trump’s TdA claims.

“I want to clear my name,” he said. “I would also like to return to the United States to continue my asylum claim.”

Judge Boasberg has been a controversial adversary for the administration.

Comments he made to fellow federal judges in March speculating that Mr. Trump would defy court orders, as well as his rulings on keeping secret subpoenas of Republican senators’ phone records, have sparked fierce opposition on Capitol Hill.