MANHATTAN (CN) - President Donald Trump's order to send Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. to a violent Salvadoran prison under the rarely used, wartime-specific Alien Enemies Act without due process contradicts the 1978 act itself, a federal judge ruled Tuesday as he ordered U.S. officials not to carry out the president's orders.
U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein issued the preliminary injunction granting relief to a class of petitioners that includes two men who were pulled off an El Salvador-bound airplane after a District of Columbia federal judge ordered a temporary restraining order blocking Trump's proclamation. The Supreme Court later vacated that order on jurisdictional grounds.
The men in the class were detained on suspicion of affiliation with the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua. In March, more than 200 migrants were sent to the El Salvador prison known as CECOT with, as Hellerstein put it, "faint hope of process or return."
Federal immigration officials have targeted people for removal based on tattoos and other superficial purported gang-affiliated features.
"The sweep for removal is ongoing, extending to the litigants in this case and others, thwarted only by order of this and other federal courts," Hellerstein wrote. "The destination, El Salvador, a country paid to take our aliens, is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed. But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family or friends."
Among the factors for Hellerstein to consider in the migrant class's habeas corpus petition was whether without his order they face irreparable harm.
The Bill Clinton appointee wrote: "Here, absent a preliminary injunction, petitioners would be removed from the United States to CECOT, where they would endure abuse and inhumane treatment with no recourse to bring them back. If that is not irreparable harm, what is?"
For its part, the U.S. government failed to demonstrate that war, invasion or predatory incursion - tenets of the Alien Enemies Act - existed, meaning the law was not validly invoked.
The order builds on the temporary restraining order Hellerstein issued last month.
During an April hearing, Hellerstein indicated he believed Trump's removal order was illegal.
Even assuming the president has the power to remove people, he said, immigration law requires the government to give those subject to removal meaningful notice and a hearing.
"This is not a secret court, an inquisition in medieval times - this is the United States of America," Hellerstein said.
Last week, the Trump called on the Supreme Court to strip nearly 350,000 Venezuelan migrants living in the U.S. of temporary protected status.
Source: Courthouse News Service
