Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union raced on Friday evening to stop the Trump administration from deporting a new group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a rarely invoked wartime law.
More than 50 Venezuelans were scheduled to be flown out of the country — presumably to El Salvador — from an immigration detention center in Anson, Texas, according to two people with knowledge of the situation. The A.C.L.U. in recent days has secured court orders barring similar deportations under the law, the Alien Enemies Act, in places including New York, Denver and Brownsville, Texas.
The situation in Anson was urgent enough that A.C.L.U. lawyers pressed their case in three different courts within five hours.
The lawyers started with an emergency filing in Federal District Court in Abilene, Texas, in which they claimed that officers at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson had started distributing notices to Venezuelan immigrants informing them that they could face deportation as soon as Friday night.
They asked Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who is overseeing the case, to issue an immediate order protecting all migrants in the Northern District of Texas who might face deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. When Judge Hendrix did not grant their request quickly, the lawyers filed a similar request to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.
The lawyers then filed an emergency petition to the Supreme Court, asking the justices to step in and issue an immediate pause on any deportations because many of the Venezuelan men had “already been loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport.”
Immigration lawyers have been playing a high-stakes game of cat and mouse with the federal government since President Trump issued a proclamation last month invoking the Alien Enemies Act as a way to deport immigrants he claims are members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang. The law, which was passed in 1798, has been used only three times before in U.S. history, during periods of declared war.
The efforts by groups like the A.C.L.U. to stop deportations under the act were complicated this month by a Supreme Court ruling that found that anyone subject to the statute needed to be given the opportunity to challenge their removal, but only in the places where they were being detained.
The decision by the justices set off a hunt for anyone who might fall under the authority of Mr. Trump’s proclamation. The A.C.L.U., hoping to come up with a system for determining where those people might be, has asked a federal judge in Washington to issue a nationwide order forcing the administration to provide 30 days’ notice to anyone in the country before officials seek to remove them under the act.
The Washington judge, James E. Boasberg, has set a hearing for Monday to discuss the request. In the meantime, the lawyers have to rely on a whisper network to figure out who to file cases on behalf of and where to file them.
On Wednesday, the A.C.L.U. filed suit in Abilene on behalf of two Venezuelan migrants being held at the Bluebonnet facility, asking Judge Hendrix to shield them against deportation. But the judge denied the request, largely because lawyers for the Justice Department told him that the men — known only by their initials, A.A.R.P. and W.M.M. — had not yet been scheduled for removal from the country.
But then on Friday, other Venezuelan migrants at the detention center were informed that they were facing imminent deportation, court papers say. One of them, known as F.G.M., was instructed to sign a removal waiver in English, even though he speaks only Spanish, the papers say.
When he refused to sign, immigration officers told him the waiver was “coming from the president,” according to court papers, “and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it.”
Among those at the Bluebonnet detention center that the A.C.L.U. is seeking to protect from deportation is a 19-year-old known as Y.S.M.
Y.S.M., court papers say, was arrested by immigration agents on March 14 and was sent to the Bluebonnet facility this week. When the agents initially questioned him, court papers say, they told him that a photograph on Facebook showing him in the presence of another person holding a gun proved he was a member of Tren de Aragua.
But according to his lawyer, Y.S.M. informed the agents that what they believed to be a gun was actually a water pistol.
A spokeswoman for the president of El Salvador, Wendy Ramos, did not respond to a request for confirmation of an upcoming flight.
Since March 15, the Trump administration has sent five flights carrying deportees to El Salvador under a deal with its president, Nayib Bukele, to hold detainees deemed by U.S. authorities to be part of criminal gangs in his country’s prison system, for a fee.
Reporting was contributed by Abbie VanSickle, Annie Correal, Maggie Haberman and Zolan Kanno-Youngs.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times.
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