Secretary of State Marco Rubio may have just violated a court order stopping the Trump administration’s fast-tracked deportations.
Rubio announced that a group of alleged gang members had been deported Sunday night.
“Last night, in a successful counter-terrorism operation with our allies in El Salvador, the United States military transferred a group of 17 violent criminals from the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 organizations, including murderers and rapists,” Rubio wrote on X Monday morning. He noted that both TdA and MS-13 were considered foreign terrorist organizations, which implies that they could be subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act.
Rubio thanked the Salvadoran government and President Nayib Bukele for “their unparalleled partnership in making our countries safe against transnational crime and terrorism.”
Multiple judges have rebuked Donald Trump’s use of the AEA and filed injunctions against his administration—and Rubio’s latest deportations may have just violated one.
Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy issued a temporary restraining order requiring the government to provide written notice and an opportunity for detainees to apply for protection before deporting them to a third country.
It seems that with this latest round of deportations, the Trump administration has violated that court order, and continued to fast-track its removal of alleged gang members.
Earlier this month, Trump invoked the AEA, a wartime law that suspends due process,. Under the act, the Trump administration swiftly deported 261 Venezuelan nationals to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, the prison in El Salvador that is notorious for human rights abuses. The U.S. government claimed that everyone deported was a terrorist.
The deportees were removed without notifying their family members or lawyers, and they were not provided with the opportunity to challenge their deportation or their designation as gang members. In many cases, the government seems to have rounded up immigrants for supposedly suspicious tattoos that ended up having nothing to do with TdA at all.
In another filing last week, Judge James Boasberg wrote that by sending the prisoners to CECOT, the Trump administration had likely violated the Foreign Affairs Reform and Restructuring Act of 1998, which states that “it shall be the policy of the United States not to expel … any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture.” Boasberg wrote that at CECOT, prisoners are reportedly abused, humiliated, and left to rot without their families knowing anything about their whereabouts or well-being.
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