Left: Donald Trump speaks at the annual Road to Majority conference in Washington, DC, in June 2024 (Allison Bailey/NurPhoto via AP). Right: U.S. District Judge James Boasberg (U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia).
The Trump administration must afford hundreds of deported Venezuelans the opportunity to plead their case in a United States court, a federal judge ordered.
The Venezuelan men have asserted their due process rights were violated when they were not given the chance to defend themselves against President Donald Trump's "secretly" invoked Alien Enemies Act (AEA), which rounded them up and sent them off to a notorious "mega-prison" in El Salvador. The chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, James Boasberg, was clear in whether he believed the administration followed the law.
"[T]his Court is declaring that Plaintiffs should not have been removed in the manner that they were, with virtually no notice and no opportunity to contest the bases of their removal, in clear contravention of their due-process rights," he wrote in his 43-page order on Monday.
As the Barack Obama appointee put it, the facts of the case and its "winding" procedural history are "well trodden." Around March 14, Trump used the AEA to send scores of Venezuelan men to the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo (CECOT) in El Salvador, declaring that "a Venezuelan gang named Tren de Aragua (TdA) had committed an invasion and predatory incursion" upon the U.S. In total, 137 of those deported joined together to sue the Trump administration, with Boasberg finding they were given "no explanation and no opportunity to challenge the reason for their hasty removal."
The plaintiffs sought an injunction requiring the government to "facilitate" their return to the U.S.
Roughly four months later, all 252 Venezuelans in CECOT, including the 137 members of the suit, were sent back to Venezuela. Venezuela, for its part, released 10 U.S. nationals and 80 Venezuelan political prisoners. In the Trump administration's view, this action ended the court proceedings.
However, the Venezuelan men, naturally, saw things differently. They again requested an injunction, saying, in Boasberg's account, that at this point they "do not directly challenge the validity of the President's Proclamation invoking the AEA" nor even "their individual designations" as members of TdA. "Instead, they simply seek the chance to raise these arguments before a United States court and ask that this Court help facilitate such opportunity," Boasberg wrote.
The administration contends that the Venezuelan men were not in its control once they were deported to El Salvador, and that it could not "facilitate" their return. Boasberg found little merit to this claim, especially given that the U.S. was paying the Central American country for its efforts.
He also pointed out that the men do not "attack" their "now-ended detention in CECOT," but rather their failure to receive a hearing to challenge the actions that sent them there. As the D.C. judge put it, "Although their detention has now ended — likely after much suffering by Plaintiffs … other consequences continue."
The judge subsequently scolded the administration for its behavior in the 9-month-plus saga.
"Plaintiffs' hasty and secretive removal from the United States was certainly intended to deprive them of an opportunity to secure prior judicial review," he wrote, citing a whistleblower's claims that then-Principal Assistant Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove stated in a meeting that if courts tried to stop deportations, the Department of Justice would "need to consider telling the courts, 'F— you' and ignore any court order."
Boasberg then places the current status of the case in context. He writes, of the plaintiffs, at length:
They seek, as this Court ordered in June, an injunction requiring the Government to "facilitate Plaintiffs' ability to proceed through habeas," as if they had not been improperly removed in the first instance. Put differently, they could have challenged the validity of the President's Proclamation invoking the AEA, the propriety of removing noncitizens outside the processes in the Immigration and Nationality Act, and their individual designations as TdA members, back in March had they been afforded the opportunity to do so before their hasty removal. They now seek the chance to raise each of those arguments, and presumably more, in United States courts upon return to this country.
The judge then reaffirmed that he was granting the motion for summary judgment, which orders the Trump administration to offer the men their due process rights.
"By granting the Motion, this Court is declaring that Plaintiffs should not have been removed in the manner that they were, with virtually no notice and no opportunity to contest the bases of their removal, in clear contravention of their due-process rights," Boasberg wrote. "The Court finds that the only remedy that would give effect to its granting of Plaintiffs' Motion would be to order the Government to undo the effects of their unlawful removal by facilitating a meaningful opportunity to contest their designation and the Proclamation's validity."
He has ordered the administration to submit a proposal "either to facilitate the return of Plaintiffs to the United States or to otherwise provide them with hearings that satisfy the requirements of due process" by Jan. 5, 2026.
The order comes at a time of especially strained relations between the U.S. and Venezuela. The U.S. has seized ships linked to Venezuelan oil and carried out strikes on boats near the Venezuelan coast, killing roughly 100 people. Venezuela has accused the U.S. of "piracy" and "aggression."