By Ted Hesson and Luc Cohen
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem on Wednesday is expected to visit a mega-prison in El Salvador holding Venezuelans deported by the U.S. as civil rights groups challenge the removals in a high-profile court battle.
Noem, an outspoken proponent of U.S. President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown, also intends to meet with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said earlier this week.
Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act on March 15 to swiftly deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, attempting to speed up removals with a law best known for its use to intern Japanese, Italian and German immigrants during World War Two.
An ensuing legal battle over the move has highlighted Trump’s attempts to strong-arm the federal judiciary, a coequal branch of government that serves as a check on executive power.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked the Alien Enemies Act deportations later that day following a legal challenge by the American Civil Liberties Union. But the Trump administration allowed two planes already in the air to continue to El Salvador where the U.S. handed 238 Venezuelan men over to Salvadoran authorities to be placed in the country’s “Terrorism Confinement Center.”
The ACLU has said the planes should have been turned around and questioned whether a third flight that departed the U.S. later that day carried migrants with valid deportation orders. In court, Justice Department lawyers have argued the first two flights did not need to come back because they had left U.S. airspace and that migrants on the third flight were deportable on other grounds.
In a court filing last week, a U.S. immigration official said many of those deported under the Alien Enemies Act had no criminal records in the U.S. but still posed a threat. The Trump administration has not provided evidence of gang membership or details of specific cases.
Family members for some men believed to have been sent to El Salvador have denied that they were gang members. Lawyers for one of the deportees, a Venezuelan professional soccer player and youth coach, said U.S. officials had wrongly labeled him a gang member based on a tattoo of a crown meant to reference his favorite team, Real Madrid.
ESCALATING LEGAL FIGHT
Trump last week called for the Washington, D.C.-based Boasberg to be impeached, triggering a rare rebuke from Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts.
George Fishman, a top homeland security attorney during Trump’s first term, said he worries the legal back-and-forth over whether the administration violated Boasberg’s order to halt deportations could distract from attempts to defend the Alien Enemies Act, a powerful enforcement tool.
“The administration needs to abide by federal court orders, unless and until they’re overturned by a higher court,” Fishman said. “I’m concerned that it increases the likelihood that we’re never going to get to a Supreme Court ruling on the merits.”
Bukele touted the arrival of the deportations flights on March 15 by posting a dramatic video on the social media site X showing men hustled off of planes and sent to the mega-prison, known as CECOT.
The Salvadoran president, who styles himself as the world’s “coolest dictator,” offered in February to jail “dangerous criminals” deported from the U.S., as well as American citizens.
(Reporting by Ted Hesson in Washington and Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Mary Milliken)
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