A federal judge blocked the Trump administration Wednesday from using of a centuries-old wartime law to deport migrants from one Texas detention center, the latest legal hurdle for the government’s push to use a proclamation to quickly remove alleged members of a Venezuelan gang from the U.S.
Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas issued the temporary restraining order on the use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove migrants from the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas.
Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, points out in his order that keeping the status quo is required while he more fully considers a lawsuit that challenges President Donald Trump’s proclamation, considering a Supreme Court ruling Monday that found the U.S. government must give migrants a chance to have a federal judge review their situation.
Migrants removed from the United States would no longer have such a chance, Rodriguez wrote. And for those erroneously removed to another country based on the proclamation, “a substantial likelihood exists that the individual could not be returned to the United States.”
The American Civil Liberties Union filed the legal challenge earlier Wednesday, alleging the U.S. government had not given sufficient notice when seeking to remove migrants under the law who deny being members of the gang.
Trump signed a proclamation last month that invoked the Alien Enemies Act, and the government used it to transfer migrants to a detention facility in El Salvador, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, which has a reputation for human rights abuses.
A federal judge in Washington previously had stopped the administration from conducting more removals under the proclamation, but the Supreme Court ruling said legal challenges must be brought in the area where the migrants are being detained.
That kicked off another round of challenges. Civil liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union, also filed litigation in New York seeking to block the removal of migrants threatened with removal under the law at a facility in that state.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, speaking to reporters Wednesday at an event at the D.C. headquarters for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, said the Trump administration after the Supreme Court decision “will continue to use” the Alien Enemies Act to remove migrants deemed as criminals, referencing a recent trip she made to the prison in El Salvador.
“One of the reasons I went to El Salvador last week was to visit with the president and ask him to continue to take terrorists from the United States of America that don’t belong here, and he is committed to continuing to work with us to make sure that we have more TdA [Tren de Aragua] members, more MS-13 members, that we’re able to incarcerate here in this country deported and in CECOT, and pay the consequences for their actions of violence,” Noem said.
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