Prisoners look out of their cell as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tours the Terrorist Confinement Center  or CECOT, on March 26, 2025, in Tecoluca, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The White House Tuesday defended the deportation of a national from El Salvador to a notorious mega-prison in that country, despite Trump administration officials admitting in court filings that the removal was a mistake.

Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia of Beltsville, Maryland, was ordered in 2019 to be removed from the United States by an immigration judge, but was granted protection from removal because it was more “likely than not that he would be persecuted by gangs in El Salvador” if he were returned, according to court documents.

Yet on March 15 he was placed on one of three deportation flights to El Salvador. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Justice admitted in separate court filings that his deportation to the brutal prison, Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, was an “administrative error.”

“This was an oversight, and the removal was carried out in good faith based on the existence of a final order of removal and Abrego-Garcia’s purported membership in MS-13,” ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert L. Cerna wrote in a Monday court filing.

Simon Y. Sandoval-Moshenberg, the attorney for Abrego Garcia, is requesting a preliminary injunction from the U.S. District Court of Maryland, which would require the Trump administration to make a request to the government of El Salvador for Abrego Garcia to be returned to U.S. custody.

The lawyer also wants a halt to U.S. payments to the government of El Salvador for detaining his client at the “notorious CECOT torture prison.”

A hearing is set for 1 p.m. Eastern Friday before U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis. She was appointed by former President Barack Obama in 2016.

Press secretary defends decision

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt Tuesday said that Abrego Garcia was a leader of the MS-13 gang, despite his deportation being “a clerical error.”

“The administration maintains the position that this individual who was deported to El Salvador and will not be returning to our country was a member of the brutal and vicious MS-13 gang,” she said.

She said the U.S. Department of Homeland Security has evidence of his gang activity that she has seen and she also alleged that Abrego Garcia was involved in human trafficking.

Sandoval-Moshenberg, the attorney for Abrego Garcia, has denied his involvement in any gangs, noting he has no criminal charges or convictions in the United States, El Salvador or any other country.

“Abrego Garcia is not a member of or has no affiliation with Tren de Aragua, MS-13, or any other criminal or street gang. Although he has been accused of general ‘gang affiliation,’ the U.S. government has never produced an iota of evidence to support this unfounded accusation,” according to court filings.

Leavitt also dismissed the 2019 order from an immigration judge granting Abrego Garcia protections from removal.

Federal law bars the removal of an individual if they will face persecution, known as a “withholding of removal.” Because of this condition, Abrego Garcia was required to check in with ICE each year, which he has complied with since 2019, according to court filings.

“Who does that judge work for? It was an immigration judge who works for the Department of Justice at the direction of the attorney general of the United States, whose name is Pam Bondi, who has committed to eradicating MS-13 from our nation’s interior,” Leavitt said.

Leavitt said that 17 more men were deported to CECOT Monday. The U.S. is paying El Salvador’s government $6 million to detain all those deported there.

Identified from news story

Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen with whom he has a child, was detained by ICE on March 12 while driving with his 5-year-old son near Baltimore, Maryland. He was informed by ICE officials that his “status had changed,” according to court filings.

Abrego Garcia’s wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, “was called and instructed to appear at their location within ten minutes to get her five-year old son, A.A.V.; otherwise, the ICE officers threatened that the child would be handed over to Child Protective Services.”

Vasquez Sura tried to call the ICE facility that her husband was transferred to and inform officials that he could not be sent back to El Salvador.

“Her attempts to protest by saying that he had won protection from being removed to El Salvador fell on deaf ears,” according to court filings.

Within three days, he would become one of the 261 men on one of three deportation flights to CECOT in El Salvador, despite a temporary restraining order in place from a district court judge from the District of Columbia that applied generally to all the deportations.

Vasquez Sura was able to identify him from a news article when a photo showed men sent to the prison with their heads shaved and arms over their necks. She recognized her husband’s scar on his head and his tattoo.

DOJ arguments

Department of Justice attorneys, on behalf of the Trump administration, argued that the district court in Maryland lacks jurisdiction because Abrego Garcia is no longer in U.S. custody and his lawyers have not shown it is likely he could be returned.

“There is no showing that any payment made to El Salvador is yet to occur; no showing that El Salvador is likely to release CECOT detainees but for any such payment; no showing that El Salvador is even inclined to consider a request to release a detainee at the United States’ request,” according to the DOJ filing.

The Department of Justice also argues that his attorney has “not clearly shown a likelihood that Abrego Garcia will be tortured or killed in CECOT.”

“While there may be allegations of abuses in other Salvadoran prisons—very few in relation to the large number of detainees—there is no clear showing that Abrego Garcia himself is likely to be tortured or killed in CECOT,” according to DOJ.

The Department of Justice said the district court should defer to the Trump administration’s determination “that Abrego Garcia will not likely be tortured or killed in El Salvador.”

“Although the government erred in removing Abrego Garcia specifically to El Salvador, the government would not have removed any alien to El Salvador for detention in CECOT if it believed that doing so would violate the United States’ obligations under the Convention (Against Torture),” according to DOJ.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments at the E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse on March 24, 2025, over a challenge of a lower court’s restraining order barring the administration from deporting Venezuelan immigrants under a wartime law. (U.S. General Services Administration photo)

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice late Monday invoked the “state secrets privilege” to block a federal judge from obtaining information about deportation flights carried out under a wartime law.

District of Columbia District Judge James E. Boasberg has been trying to determine if the Trump administration violated a restraining order he had placed in connection with the deportations of Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

The Trump administration said Monday further details could not be provided about the flights to El Salvador, where the alleged gang members were sent to a mega-prison.

The filing, signed by Attorney General Pam Bondi, uses the state secrets privilege to refuse answering questions posed in a March 18 order from Boasberg, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The privilege is a common-law doctrine that protects sensitive national security information from being released.

“The Court has all of the facts it needs to address the compliance issues before it,” according to the DOJ filing. “Further intrusions on the Executive Branch would present dangerous and wholly unwarranted separation-of-powers harms with respect to diplomatic and national security concerns that the Court lacks competence to address.”

In his March 18 order, Boasberg wanted details about what times the flights took off from the United States, when they left U.S. airspace, when they landed in their designated countries, when the immigrants being deported were subject to the Alien Enemies Act and the number of people on the flights who were subject to the Alien Enemies Act.

The DOJ filing cites national security issues and says that “confirming the exact time the flights departed, or their particular locations at some other time, would facilitate efforts to track those flights and future flights.”

“In turn, disclosing any information that assists in the tracking of the flights would both endanger the government personnel operating those flights and aid efforts by our adversaries to draw inferences about diplomatic negotiations and coordination relating to operations by the Executive Branch to remove terrorists and other criminal aliens from the country,” according to the filing. “Simply put, the Court has no cause to compel disclosure of information that would undermine or impede future counterterrorism operations by the United States.”

Appeals court action

The filing followed the Trump administration’s request for an emergency hearing before a District of Columbia federal appeals court.

A panel of three federal appellate judges seemed split Monday while hearing the Trump administration’s challenge of the lower court’s restraining order on the use of the wartime law to deport, without due process, the Venezuelan nationals. 

Judge Justin R. Walker, who was appointed to the U.S. District Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit by President Donald Trump, appeared to align with the Department of Justice’s arguments, while Judge Patricia A. Millett, whom Democratic President Barack Obama appointed, raised serious questions about due process.

The position of Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson, a President George H.W. Bush nominee who is the third member of the panel, spoke less than the others and revealed little about her position.

The panel will rule on the government’s challenge of the temporary restraining order placed by Boasberg, the chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. The Justice Department argued the order undercut the president’s wartime authority and that the suit by civil rights groups should have been brought to a different court.

Groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union argued Boasberg’s order correctly defended due process protections.

The D.C. Circuit hearing followed back-and-forth hearings before Boasberg, who has vowed to determine whether the Trump administration violated his March 15 oral order to turn around deportation planes.

After Boasberg issued his order, three deportation planes still landed in El Salvador, with mostly Venezuelan men taken to a notorious mega-prison.

Shortly before Monday’s hearing, Boasberg rejected the latest Trump administration attempt to vacate his restraining order that barred use of the proclamation without due process.

In Monday’s order, Boasberg said anyone who is removed from the U.S. under the act is “entitled to individualized hearings.”

“Because the named Plaintiffs dispute that they are members of Tren de Aragua, they may not be deported until a court has been able to decide the merits of their challenge,” he wrote. “Nor may any members of the provisionally certified class be removed until they have been given the opportunity to challenge their designations as well.”

Due process

Millett grilled Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign on the Trump administration’s view on what due process should be granted to those subject to the proclamation, which states that any Venezuelan national 14 and older with suspected ties to the Tren de Aragua gang may be deported.

Ensign said the Trump administration doesn’t agree that those subject to the proclamation the president signed March 14 should be notified they are being removed under the Alien Enemies Act.

“We agree that if you bring habeas (corpus) that you can raise such challenges,” he said.

A habeas corpus claim asserts someone is unjustly imprisoned and can be used to challenge immigration detention.

Millett said the deportees had no opportunity to raise such a claim.

“Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act,” Millett said, referring to German nationals who were able to have a hearing before a board to challenge their removal when the wartime law was invoked during World War II.

The act had previously been invoked only three times in U.S. history, all during wartime.

Millett questioned how the Venezuelans on the first two deportation planes could have challenged their deportations.

“Those people on those planes on that Saturday had no opportunity to file habeas or any type of action to challenge the removal under the (Alien Enemies Act),” she said.

Lee Gelernt, American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney, said that Venezuelans who were removed were “designated (Tren de Aragua) without any advance notice, rushed to planes” and given papers that “specifically says you are not entitled to review.” He said ACLU is preparing to enter that evidence into the court record.

Jurisdiction

Walker questioned the venue where the lawsuit was filed. He asked why the challenge wasn’t brought in a Texas district court, because the original five men who brought the suit were detained there.

Gelernt said a challenge could have been brought in Texas, but that it was not clear where all the detainees subject to the proclamation were being held.

“We certainly weren’t looking just to get our five individuals from being sent to a Salvadorian prison,” Gelernt said. “This would have had to be a class. If the government is suggesting that we could have gone in there for every individual, absolutely not. We did not know who had been designated. This has all been done in secret.”

Walker also questioned how a temporary restraining order could order planes that had already left the U.S. to return.

“I’m wondering if you can point me to a district court (temporary restraining order) or injunction that survived appeal that stopped an ongoing, partially overseas national security operation in the way that this… did (to) order planes to take foreigners from international waters to the United States,” Walker asked Gelernt.

Gelernt said that the issue before the appeals court was not about the order to return deportation planes.

“The government cannot take the position that it’s an interference, by this court, on national security grounds, to give people (due) process,” he said.

New court filings revealed several immigrants on the March 15 flights were returned to the U.S. from El Salvador. They include a Nicaraguan national and eight Venezuelan women who were returned because the mega-prison is for men only.

DOJ argues notice not needed

Ensign argued that the order blocking the implementation of the Alien Enemies Act wrongly constrained the president’s wartime authority.

Millett said that the issue wasn’t about the president’s authority to use the Alien Enemies Act, but how the administration used it.

“The question is whether the implementation of this proclamation without any process to determine whether people qualify under it,” she said.

She asked Ensign if the appeals court lifting the stay would lead to a situation where “people are lined up and put on planes without notice or time to file for habeas, even though the government agrees that … they have a right to have the decision made about whether they even qualify under the proclamation?”

Ensign reserved that option for the government.

“If the (temporary restraining order) is dissolved, the government believes there would not be a limitation and that the statute does not require such notice,” he said.  

American Civil Liberties Union lead attorney Lee Gelernt holds a press conference outside the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia after a March 21, 2025, hearing on deportation flights that occurred despite a court’s restraining order in place. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom) 

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Friday probed the U.S. Department of Justice about whether the Trump administration knowingly defied his court order to return deportation flights to the United States and questioned the president’s authority to invoke a wartime law during peacetime.

The case, which is likely to head to the U.S. Supreme Court, will test President Donald Trump’s authority to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and apply it to any Venezuelan nationals ages 14 and up who are suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang amid his mass deportation plans.

Three deportation flights containing some Venezuelans subject to the proclamation that Trump signed last Friday were in transit when U.S. District Court Judge James Emanuel Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order to block the removals. But the administration continued sending the men to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

The Trump administration published a highly produced video detailing the operation, but has not been forthright with answers to questions Boasberg posed about it.

“The government’s not being terribly cooperative at this point, but I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be,” Boasberg said Friday.

Wartime law

Boasberg also pressed the Department of Justice attorney Drew Ensign on whether the Trump administration can deport people under the Alien Enemies Act without allowing the deportees to prove they are not members or associated with the Tren de Aragua gang.

“How do they challenge that removal?” Boasberg asked.

The Alien Enemies Act allows nationals of a country deemed an enemy of the U.S. to be detained and deported without due process of law regardless of immigration status.

Boasberg also raised concerns of using the proclamation when the U.S. is not at war.

“The policy ramifications for this are incredibly troublesome,” Boasberg said of the Alien Enemies Act. “This is a long way from the heartland of the act.”

A panel of judges in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments Monday afternoon on the Trump administration seeking an emergency stay on the restraining order. 

Restraining order

Boasberg asked DOJ attorney Ensign to clarify how he interpreted the oral temporary restraining order issued on March 15.

He asked Ensign if he relayed to the Trump administration that his order included returning any Venezuelans back to the U.S. who were deported under the wartime authority.

“I understood your intent, that you meant that to be effective at that time,”  Ensign said of the oral temporary restraining order.

In filings, the Department of Justice has argued that Boasberg’s oral argument was not binding because it was not written.

For nearly a week, the Department of Justice has evaded pointed questions from Boasberg about the timing of the deportation flights on March 15.

Boasberg said Thursday he would give the Trump administration until Tuesday to submit a declaration on whether the government was invoking the state-secrets privilege and a brief “showing cause why they did not violate the Court’s Temporary Restraining Orders by failing to return class members removed from the United States on the two earliest planes that departed on March 15, 2025.”

In Friday filings, Trump officials said they are currently having Cabinet-level conversations about using that privilege to block Boasberg from obtaining details about the timing of the deportation flights.

Flight location an issue

The Department of Justice has also argued that because the flights were no longer in U.S. airspace or territory when Boasberg issued the restraining order, they were not under U.S. courts’ jurisdiction.

Lead attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union Lee Gelernt pushed back on that claim. He told Boasberg that some immigrants on those deportation flights to El Salvador were returned to the U.S. because of mistakes and that the El Salvadoran “government would not take them.”

He said that included someone who was not a Venezuelan national, and a woman because the mega-prison is for men only.

He said the ACLU will submit an affidavit late Friday with more details.

Gelernt said the ACLU is also questioning the type of removal for people on the third flight, even though the Trump administration said those on that flight had final orders of removal and were not subject to the Alien Enemies Act.

Gelernt argued that in immigration law, those with final orders are required to be notified what country they are being deported to. He said that was not the case with the immigrants on the third flight, which originally went to Honduras before heading to El Salvador.

“We asked the judge to clarify that with the government, because it seems very doubtful that Venezuelans had a final order that said you could be removed to El Salvador,” Gelernt said to reporters after Friday’s hearing.

The White House earlier this week said of the men on the deportation flights, 137 were alleged Tren de Aragua members and deported under the Alien Enemies Act.

Attorneys for several of the 238 Venezuelan men deported argue their clients are not members of the gang and were only targeted by immigration officials because they had tattoos and were Venezuelan nationals.  

El Salvador prison

Gelernt said that because the Trump administration is paying the government of El Salvador $6 million to imprison the men, he believes those men who were deported under the wartime law can be returned, although it would be a lengthy process.

“I think we very much think the federal court can order the U.S. to get them out, since they’re constructively in U.S. custody,” he said outside the courtroom. “The U.S. is apparently paying for it all. (El Salvador is) doing it at the behest of the United States.”

Human Rights Watch, a nonprofit that monitors human rights conditions around the world, has raised major concerns with the conditions of the prison and has noted that the group “is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison.”

Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian president, called this week for the men taken to the mega prison to be returned to Venezuela, calling on El Salvador president to “not be an accomplice to this kidnapping, because our boys did not commit any crime in the United States, none,” according to CNN.

“They were not brought to trial, they were not given the right to a defense, the right to due process, they were deceived, handcuffed, put on a plane, kidnapped, and sent to a concentration camp in El Salvador,” Maduro said.

Several of the men who were transferred to El Salvador’s prison initially fled Venezuela because they experienced violence from officials after they partook in political protests against the Maduro regime, according to court filings. 

President of El Salvador Nayib Bukele said hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported from the U.S. to a prison in his country under the Alien Enemies Act would perform hard labor for up to a year, potentially longer.  In this photo, he delivers a speech during the first press conference of the year at Casa Presidencial on Jan. 14, 2025, in San Salvador, El Salvador. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — In new court briefings Thursday, attorneys for several Venezuelan immigrants say their clients either had no criminal record or had cases before an immigration judge when they were deported under the Trump administration’s wartime authority — despite a federal judge ordering the return of the flights to the United States.

Attorneys for four men who were sent to a notorious maximum security prison in El Salvador said their clients had two things in common: They were accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 the president invoked, and they all had tattoos.

Among those four men deported were a professional soccer player; a father whose son is a U.S. citizen; a political activist who protested the Maduro regime in Venezuela; and an asylum seeker. 

238 Venezuelans on flights

Last week, President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which allowed the rapid deportation of Venezuelan nationals 14 and older who are suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

“If the President can label any group as enemy aliens under the Act, and that designation is unreviewable, then there is no limit on who can be sent to a Salvadoran prison, or any limit on how long they will remain there,” the American Civil Liberties Union, which originally filed the suit, wrote in recent court briefings.

The White House confirmed 238 Venezuelans were deported and flown to El Salvador, but is refusing to answer detailed questions about the timing of the March 15 flights, after a federal judge placed a temporary restraining order that same day on use of the wartime authority.

Thursday’s filings also included sworn statements from four attorneys who had clients initially on the deportation flights heading to the prison in El Salvador, but were removed before the plane left the U.S.

In separate accounts, the four men who disembarked the plane and questioned what was happening said they were told by an immigration official they had “won the lottery” because they were not being deported that day.

The eight exhibits by attorneys came just before a Friday hearing before U.S. District Court Judge James Emanuel Boasberg in the District of Columbia, who is pressing the government for more details on the timing of the two deportation flights. 

Hard labor

The prison that the men were taken to, known as the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, has concerned human rights groups like the Human Rights Watch.

The president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, wrote on social media that the men deported from the U.S. to his country would perform hard labor for up to a year, potentially longer. 

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the U.S. government paid El Salvador $6 million to detain the men.

In a court filing with the ACLU, Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas Division of Human Rights Watch, said that “the Salvadoran government has described people held in CECOT as ‘terrorists,’ and has said that they ‘will never leave.’”

“Human Rights Watch is not aware of any detainees who have been released from that prison,” she said.

Tattoos of crowns, rosary, flowers

One of the men taken to CECOT is Jerce Reyes Barrios, a professional soccer player who marched in two political demonstrations protesting the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, his attorney, Linette Tobin, wrote.

Barrios came to the U.S. in 2024 using the CBP One app, a tool the Biden administration used to help migrants make appointments with asylum officers. The Trump administration shut down the app on the president’s first day in office and have repurposed the app as a self-deportation tool.

Tobin said that Barrios, who had no criminal record in the U.S. or Venezuela, applied for asylum and had a court hearing in April.

She said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement accused Barrios of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang because of his tattoos. He has a tattoo on his arm with a soccer ball and a crown on top, with a rosary.

“DHS alleges that this tattoo is proof of gang membership,” Tobin said. “In reality, he chose this tattoo, because it is similar to the logo for his favorite soccer team, Real Madrid.”

Another attorney, Austin Thierry, said his client, E.V., fled Venezuela after being tortured by officials for participating in a protest against the regime.

Since E.V. has been in ICE detention, “his partner and infant son have struggled to meet their expenses and maintain housing,” Thierry said, adding that his client’s son is a U.S. citizen.

“EV has various tattoos, such as tattoos of anime, flowers, and animals, that he chose to get for personal and artistic reasons,” Thierry said.

“E.V. also has a tattoo of a crown, which may be why ICE falsely accused him of gang membership. However, this crown is not related to Tren de Aragua but rather, a tribute to his grandmother whose date of death appears at the base of the crown.”

Asylum cases pending

Another immigration attorney, Katherine Kim, said her client, referred to as L.G., had a pending asylum case and that ICE alleged he was associated with Tren de Aragua.

She said L.G. denied being a member and has three tattoos.

“One is a rosary, the other is his partner’s name, and the third is a rose and a clock,” she said. “None of these tattoos are related to Tren de Aragua gang membership or membership in any other gang.”

Immigration attorney Osvaldo Caro-Cruz, said his client, JABV, fled Venezuela due to political persecution and applied for asylum through the CBP One app.

“His tattoos are a Rose, a Clock and a Crown with his son’s name on it,”  Caro-Cruz wrote in a court filing. “These are common in Venezuela and bear no exclusive association with gang affiliation.”

Caro-Cruz said he was able to determine that JABV was deported to the prison in El Salvador because the president, Bukele, published a video and JABV’s brother recognized him.

Tattoo artist

Another filing was by Solanyer Michell Sarabia Gonzalez, who said he fears his younger brother was sent to El Salvador.

Both brothers have asylum cases pending. When they went to their ICE check-in appointment, the younger one, 19-year-old Anyelo Jose Sarabia, was asked about his hand tattoo by an immigration official and later detained.

Sabaria has no criminal record and is a tattoo artist.

Gonzalez said he can no longer find his brother on the ICE detainee locator.  

“I am extremely concerned about the health and safety of my little brother,” he wrote in his court filing.