A federal judge in Denver said she will rule by Tuesday whether to block the Trump administration from sending Venezuelans held in ICE detention in Aurora to a prison in El Salvador without adequate notice or a chance to prove they are not gang members.
In an hourlong court hearing Monday, ACLU Colorado argued that Venezuelan men in the detention center are at risk of being driven to the airport and placed on planes to El Salvador under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked by President Donald Trump.
U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney said she would decide what to do within 24 hours.
The hearing follows an emergency U.S. Supreme Court ruling early Saturday that said the Trump administration could not deport alleged Venezuelan gang members detained in Texas. Buses taking men from a Texas detention center to the airport over the weekend were forced by the ruling to turn around.
“That is the only thing that stopped those human beings from being disappeared to the CECOT prison in El Salvador,” ACLU Colorado legal director Tim Macdonald argued in federal court in Denver.
He asked the judge for a temporary stay of deportation not only for two unnamed Venezuelan men who are part of the lawsuit, but for the entire class of Venezuelans held at the detention center in Aurora.
In recent days, detainees in Aurora have received notices that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was sending them to El Salvador within the next day. The notices are “chilling for anyone who cares about due process,” Macdonald said. He said the notices are in English, even though those who received them speak and understand only Spanish.
“You are talking about unrepresented people who speak Spanish held in a facility” with limited access to calling loved ones or lawyers, he said. “It is prosperous to suggest that a 24-hour notice would be reasonable.”
He argued that the federal government should give people at least 30 days, enough time to file for relief in court. About 85% of the more than 1,200 detainees in Aurora do not have attorneys. Macdonald also argued that invoking the Alien Enemies Act is wrong, since the United States is not at war or being invaded by another nation.
District courts across the country, including in New York, Pennsylvania and Texas, have weighed in on the issue in recent days as ICE has sent people to El Salvador after accusing them of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua. In some cases, the only proof offered by the government was detainees’ tattoos.
Government attorneys argued that the Denver court does not have jurisdiction to create class-action status, which would protect potentially hundreds of detainees from immediate deportation.
The defendants in the case include President Trump, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, director of the Denver ICE field office Robert Guadian and the warden of the ICE detention center in Aurora, Dawn Ceja.
The Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network joined the American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit, accusing the government of “scooping people up and sending them to El Salvador” without “any due process.”
“People from our community keep disappearing — be it raids, flights to Guantánamo, or middle-of-the-night transfers to a torture prison in El Salvador,” Monique Sherman, the network’s managing attorney for the detention program, said in a news release. “These acts of terror must stop.”
Judge Sweeney had issued an emergency restraining order last week preventing the deportation of the two men in the lawsuit, identified as D.B.U. and R.M.M.
They are “young men from Venezuela facing unfounded allegations of membership in a gang,” the legal network said. The network said they feared the men were among the next to be sent to El Salvador.
“People were disappeared under darkness and it is unclear when, if ever, they will return,” the network said.
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