Latest news with #Venezuelans'
Mint
07-07-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Lawyers Say New Evidence Challenges Trump on El Salvador Prisons
Lawyers for Venezuelans sent to a prison in El Salvador claim new evidence 'contradicts' the US government's claims that Salvadoran officials, not the Trump administration, have legal authority over the men. Attorneys on Monday filed a copy of statements that El Salvador submitted to a United Nations human rights office in April, stating that 'the jurisdiction and legal responsibility' for detainees 'lie exclusively' with the United States under agreements between the two countries. The US government, however, has repeatedly insisted that it had no control over the Venezuelan prisoners once they were turned over to El Salvador. That position was backed by a federal judge in Washington, who ruled in June that the detainees were no longer in the 'constructive custody' of the US. 'The documents filed with the court today show that the administration has not been honest with the court or the American people,' Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, one of the groups representing the Venezuelans, said in a statement. The case is one of the highest-profile challenges to the Trump Administration's crackdown on immigration. The Venezuelan men, who the US claims are gang members, were sent to El Salvador's notorious Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a facility denounced by human rights groups. A spokesperson for the State Department declined to comment, nor did public information officers for the office of El Salvador's president and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. US District Judge James Boasberg relied on a May declaration from a senior State Department official stating that 'the detention and ultimate disposition of those detained in CECOT and other Salvadoran detention facilities are matters within the legal authority of El Salvador.' Lawyers for the Venezuelans argue the new evidence from the UN undermines that statement. The April documents were part of a probe into claims that El Salvador was responsible for the disappearance of people sent to its prisons from the United States. El Salvador denied wrongdoing. It wasn't immediately clear how the latest filing will affect the case. The Venezuelans' lawyers suggested they could ask the judge's permission to gather more information from the government. The case is before a federal appeals court on the government's challenge to another part of Boasberg's June order requiring that the Venezuelans in El Salvador be given an opportunity to contest their removal. The case is J.G.G. v. Trump, 25-cv-766. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
Yahoo
10-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Supporters ask to visit deported Venezuelans in Salvadoran jail
Supporters of Venezuelans deported by the United States to El Salvador, including one of their relatives, appealed to President Nayib Bukele's government Tuesday to let them see the migrants in prison. It was the first visit to the Central American nation by a family member since more than 250 Venezuelans were expelled by the United States in March, accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. "We want to be allowed a visit, to check on their health, and to ask for their prompt release," Jhoanna Sanguino, the aunt of Widmer Agelvis Sanguino, told AFP. Reina Cardenas, a friend of Andry Hernandez Romero's family, said: "We want him to know he's not alone." "We're fighting for them," she added. The two women were accompanied by Walter Marquez, president of the Amparo Foundation, a human rights NGO providing legal support to some of the deportees. "We want to urge the president to receive us so we can present all the documentation that proves they should be released," Marquez told AFP after submitting a visit request. El Salvador has no international criminal jurisdiction to detain the Venezuelans, who have not been sentenced in the United States, he said. "Not one of them belongs to Tren de Aragua," Marquez added. US President Donald Trump invoked rarely used wartime laws to fly many of the migrants to El Salvador without any court hearings. His administration struck a deal to pay the government of ally Bukele millions of dollars to hold the deportees in a maximum security prison. Washington has said the Venezuelans' tattoos are evidence of their gang affiliation, though experts say that Tren de Aragua members do not commonly sport gang markings. Sanguino believes that her 24-year-old nephew was deported because of his tattoos of a clock, a rose and an owl. "It's shocking not knowing anything about them," she said. "We've put our personal lives on hold to demand justice." A law firm hired by Caracas to represent some of the other detained Venezuelans says that it has been denied access to them. mis/dr/des
France 24
10-06-2025
- Politics
- France 24
Supporters ask to visit deported Venezuelans in Salvadoran jail
It was the first visit to the Central American nation by a family member since more than 250 Venezuelans were expelled by the United States in March, accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang. "We want to be allowed a visit, to check on their health, and to ask for their prompt release," Jhoanna Sanguino, the aunt of Widmer Agelvis Sanguino, told AFP. Reina Cardenas, a friend of Andry Hernandez Romero's family, said: "We want him to know he's not alone." "We're fighting for them," she added. The two women were accompanied by Walter Marquez, president of the Amparo Foundation, a human rights NGO providing legal support to some of the deportees. "We want to urge the president to receive us so we can present all the documentation that proves they should be released," Marquez told AFP after submitting a visit request. El Salvador has no international criminal jurisdiction to detain the Venezuelans, who have not been sentenced in the United States, he said. "Not one of them belongs to Tren de Aragua," Marquez added. US President Donald Trump invoked rarely used wartime laws to fly many of the migrants to El Salvador without any court hearings. His administration struck a deal to pay the government of ally Bukele millions of dollars to hold the deportees in a maximum security prison. Washington has said the Venezuelans' tattoos are evidence of their gang affiliation, though experts say that Tren de Aragua members do not commonly sport gang markings. Sanguino believes that her 24-year-old nephew was deported because of his tattoos of a clock, a rose and an owl. "It's shocking not knowing anything about them," she said. "We've put our personal lives on hold to demand justice." A law firm hired by Caracas to represent some of the other detained Venezuelans says that it has been denied access to them.
Yahoo
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Judge orders Trump administration to bring Venezuelans back from El Salvador prison
Backed by a Supreme Court order, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must bring back to the United States hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members who were sent to a mega prison in El Salvador without any court review of the criminal allegations against them. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, D.C., said the alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang who were deported in mid-March under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act are entitled to filing habeas petitions to challenge the legal basis for their deportation and imprisonment in the notorious facility in El Salvador known as CECOT, the Spanish initials for the Terrorism Confinement Center. Describing the Venezuelans' ordeal as 'Kafkaesque,' the judge noted that while the U.S. Supreme Court in April overturned his injunction stopping the removals of the suspected Venezuelan gang members, the justices ruled that the migrants have a due-process right to contest their detention on an individual basis in the United States. 'Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act. Perhaps, moreover, [the Trump administration is] are correct that Plaintiffs [Venezuelan immigrants] are gang members,' Boasberg wrote in his 69-page order. 'But — and this is the critical point — there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government's say-so. 'Defendants instead spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made,' Boasberg added. 'And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.' Boasberg's rebuke of the Department of Homeland Security's decision to invoke the the archaic war powers law as grounds for summarily deporting the suspected Venezuelan gang members followed a major ruling by the Supreme Court in April. The court vacated the judge's temporary restraining order that had blocked the removal of alleged Venezuelan gang members, giving the Trump administration the green light to use the wartime law to carry out the deportations of certain migrants. The majority ruled that challenges to the detention and removal of migrants using the Alien Enemies Act must be brought as legal petitions in the area where the plaintiffs were held in the United States, not in Washington, D.C., where the American Civil Liberties Union filed its petition. But the majority also found that such migrants are entitled to due process of the law as part of their removal proceedings. The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit in question said they had been wrongly accused of being members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Alien Enemies Act detainees 'must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the act,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. 'The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.' The high court opinion came just as the judge who issued the temporary restraining order was mulling whether to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for violating his order to pause the flights of Venezuelan migrants to the mega prison in El Salvador that began in March. Boasberg originally imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order halting the deportations of alleged members of Tren de Aragua. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that all nine members of the Supreme Court agree that judicial review is available to migrants. 'The only question is where that judicial review should occur,' Kavanaugh wrote. Among the immigrants sent to the prison in El Salvador was a Maryland man. In a related legal dispute, the Trump administration admitted that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, was deported there due to an 'administrative error' — despite an immigration court order that he not be removed from the United States. Another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to bring him back to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed the judge's order directing the Trump administration to 'facilitate' Garcia's release, but he's still imprisoned in El Salvador.
Miami Herald
04-06-2025
- Politics
- Miami Herald
Judge orders Trump administration to bring Venezuelans back from El Salvador prison
Backed by a Supreme Court order, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must bring back to the United States hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members who were sent to a mega prison in El Salvador without any court review of the criminal allegations against them. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, D.C., said the alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang who were deported in mid-March under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act are entitled to filing habeas petitions to challenge the legal basis for their deportation and imprisonment in the notorious facility in El Salvador known as CECOT, the Spanish initials for the Terrorism Confinement Center. Describing the Venezuelans' ordeal as 'Kafkaesque,' the judge noted that while the U.S. Supreme Court in April overturned his injunction stopping the removals of the suspected Venezuelan gang members, the justices ruled that the migrants have a due-process right to contest their detention on an individual basis in the United States. 'Perhaps the President lawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act. Perhaps, moreover, [the Trump administration is] are correct that Plaintiffs [Venezuelan immigrants] are gang members,' Boasberg wrote in his 69-page order. 'But — and this is the critical point — there is simply no way to know for sure, as the CECOT Plaintiffs never had any opportunity to challenge the Government's say-so. 'Defendants instead spirited away planeloads of people before any such challenge could be made,' Boasberg added. 'And now, significant evidence has come to light indicating that many of those currently entombed in CECOT have no connection to the gang and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.' Boasberg's rebuke of the Department of Homeland Security's decision to invoke the the archaic war powers law as grounds for summarily deporting the suspected Venezuelan gang members followed a major ruling by the Supreme Court in April. The court vacated the judge's temporary restraining order that had blocked the removal of alleged Venezuelan gang members, giving the Trump administration the green light to use the wartime law to carry out the deportations of certain migrants. The majority ruled that challenges to the detention and removal of migrants using the Alien Enemies Act must be brought as legal petitions in the area where the plaintiffs were held in the United States, not in Washington, D.C., where the American Civil Liberties Union filed its petition. But the majority also found that such migrants are entitled to due process of the law as part of their removal proceedings. The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit in question said they had been wrongly accused of being members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Alien Enemies Act detainees 'must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the act,' Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. 'The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.' The high court opinion came just as the judge who issued the temporary restraining order was mulling whether to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for violating his order to pause the flights of Venezuelan migrants to the mega prison in El Salvador that began in March. Boasberg originally imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order halting the deportations of alleged members of Tren de Aragua. In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that all nine members of the Supreme Court agree that judicial review is available to migrants. 'The only question is where that judicial review should occur,' Kavanaugh wrote. Among the immigrants sent to the prison in El Salvador was a Maryland man. In a related legal dispute, the Trump administration admitted that Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native, was deported there due to an 'administrative error' — despite an immigration court order that he not be removed from the United States. Another federal judge ordered the Trump administration to bring him back to the U.S. The Supreme Court affirmed the judge's order directing the Trump administration to 'facilitate' Garcia's release, but he's still imprisoned in El Salvador.
