Judge rules Venezuelans deported to El Salvador can challenge detention

A U.S. federal judge ruled Wednesday that hundreds of Venezuelans deported to El Salvador under an 18th-century wartime law must be granted the right to challenge their detention—dealing a blow to the Trump administration’s controversial immigration crackdown.

A U.S. federal judge has ruled that hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported to El Salvador earlier this year must be given the opportunity to legally challenge their detentions — a significant rebuke to the Trump administration’s sweeping use of wartime powers to remove alleged gang members.

In a decision issued Wednesday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg said the deportees, many of whom are now held in El Salvador’s high-security Terrorism Confinement Center, were denied proper legal process when they were expelled under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — a rarely used law from the 18th century originally designed for wartime removals.

Boasberg did not go so far as to order the Trump administration to return the migrants to the U.S., but gave it one week to explain how it will allow the detainees to file legal challenges — known as habeas corpus petitions — from within El Salvador.

“The process — which was improperly withheld — must now be afforded to them,” Boasberg wrote. “Absent this relief, the government could snatch anyone off the street, turn him over to a foreign country, and then effectively foreclose any corrective course of action.”

The Venezuelans were deported in March after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to quickly expel alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, bypassing normal immigration procedures. However, lawyers and family members of the migrants say the gang ties were unproven, and that none of the individuals were allowed to contest the accusations in court.

The administration reportedly paid $6 million to El Salvador’s government to detain the group. Boasberg’s ruling is the first judicial decision directly addressing the status of those already removed from U.S. soil under this policy.

The Supreme Court had previously ruled that migrants must be allowed to challenge such deportations, but those rulings applied only to individuals still in the U.S. Boasberg’s decision extends that principle to those already sent abroad.

The judge’s action is the latest in a series of legal setbacks for Trump’s immigration agenda, though the former president has also seen wins at the Supreme Court. Trump had previously called for Boasberg’s impeachment after the judge attempted to block the deportations in March — prompting a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts, who emphasized the judiciary’s independence.

Despite Boasberg’s order to return the migrants, the administration did not comply. That defiance triggered a judicial inquiry into possible contempt of court, which remains on hold while the case is under appeal.

In his latest ruling, Boasberg cited a related Supreme Court case involving a Salvadoran migrant deported from Maryland in violation of a court order. While the high court declined to force the government to bring that individual back, it upheld the lower court’s right to demand procedural fairness — a precedent Boasberg said justified his current directive.

His decision, he emphasized, strikes a balance between the executive branch’s control over foreign affairs and the constitutional rights of migrants — ensuring that deportees are not entirely beyond the reach of judicial oversight.

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