A federal appeals court in Washington on Wednesday kept in place, for now, a block on the Trump administration’s use of a rarely invoked wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of a violent street gang.
By a 2-to-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Venezuelan migrants were likely to succeed in their claims that the government cannot use the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily transfer them to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing.
“The government’s removal scheme denies plaintiffs even a gossamer thread of due process, even though the government acknowledges their right to judicial review of their removability,” Judge Patricia A. Millett wrote.
The decision dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to advance its immigration agenda through the wartime act, but the underlying order will run out in days anyway. Additional proceedings over whether to issue a longer-running injunction are likely to go back before Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge in Federal District Court in Washington.
In mid-March, Judge Boasberg issued a restraining order barring the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove Venezuelans it says belong to the gang Tren de Aragua. His order does not prohibit the government from detaining such men, or from deporting them after hearings under normal immigration law.
In a related dispute, Judge Boasberg is also trying to determine if the Justice Department violated his court order by completing the transfer of two planeloads of Venezuelans who were en route to El Salvador at the time he issued it. The government has argued that it did not violate his order because the planes were already outside U.S. airspace when he issued it.
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