Less than 48 hours after the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport noncitizens with little-to-no due process, a federal judge in New York judge on Wednesday will consider blocking any future removals as the Trump administration allegedly prepares to commence more deportations.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein set a hearing Wednesday to consider issuing an emergency order to block the removals of two Venezuelan men targeted for deportation, as well as potentially bar any deportations of detained noncitizens under the Alien Enemies Act.
The Trump administration last month invoked the AEA to deport more than 200 alleged migrant gang members to El Salvador by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
In a brief filed Tuesday in New York, ACLU lawyers representing two migrants accused by the government of being Tren de Aragua members wrote that authorities “seek to move Petitioners in secret, without due process, to a prison in El Salvador known for dire conditions, torture, and other forms of physical abuse — possibly for life.”
“This has already borne out for over 130 individuals on March 15 who have lost all contact with their attorneys, family, and the world,” the attorneys wrote.
While the Supreme Court on Monday suggested that future litigation would play out in a Texas federal courtroom, the lawyers for the men brought a habeas case in New York because both are currently in custody in Orange County, New York, after their deportations were blocked last month by a judge in Washington D.C.
According to lawyers with the ACLU, one of the men is a 21-year-old Venezuelan national who entered the United States in 2024 to seek asylum, fleeing threats from Tren de Aragua and potential persecution from the Maduro regime based on his sexual orientation.
The other plaintiff is a 32-year-old Venezuelan national who filed an asylum application after entering the United States in 2022, claiming he feared torture and imprisonment based on his protests of the Maduro regime.
Judge Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee, on Tuesday ordered that the two men should not be removed from New York “unless and until the Court orders otherwise,” and the ACLU is seeking to get a temporary restraining order that potentially covers any noncitizen in immigration custody who is at risk of deportation under the Alien Enemies Act.
They have argued that the law was improperly invoked by the Trump to target a criminal organization — not a state actor — and that it was invoked outside of a war or an invasion.
“The AEA has only ever been a power invoked in time of war, and plainly only applies to warlike actions: it cannot be used here against nationals of a country — Venezuela — with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” the lawyers argued.
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