A federal judge in Denver has extended a ban on near-immediate deportations of Venezuelans who have been accused of being members of the street gang Tren de Aragua.
The ruling applies to immigrants targeted under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which gives the government broad authority to deport people in times of war or invasion. President Donald Trump invoked the act in March, arguing that Tren de Aragua has invaded the United States.
The injunction signed Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney replaced a temporary restraining order that was about to expire. It means immigration officials are blocked from using the act to deport people detained in Colorado until the case reaches a final judgment. They are also blocked from transferring suspected gang members out of Aurora and to immigration facilities in other states.
The case began when the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado and an immigrant rights group argued that two men from Venezuela were at risk of getting sent on a plane to an infamously dangerous prison in El Salvador. The ruling applies not just to the two men, but to all Venezuelans held at the detention center who face near-immediate deportation under the 18th-century act.
A federal judge in New York issued a similar order Tuesday affecting Venezuelans in that district. And last month, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a late-night emergency order blocking federal officials from using the act to put detained immigrants on planes bound for the Terrorism Confinement Center, a megaprison in El Salvador that has been accused of using electric shock and waterboarding.
The conditions of the prison in El Salvador “create a tremendous risk of extreme physical harm” and were enough to justify the ACLU’s claim that their clients would face “irreparable harm” without an injunction, the Denver judge ruled.
Her order does not prohibit the government from deporting immigrants for other reasons. It also does not bar immigration authorities from arresting alleged gang members and holding them in detention.
In her ruling, Sweeney said nothing in the court injunction prohibits the government “from deporting or removing individuals under the immigration authority” allowed through other laws.
When Trump issued a proclamation in March invoking the Alien Enemies Act, he said Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” The gang “commits brutal crimes” including murder and kidnapping and is “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States,” the proclamation said.
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