The Department of Homeland Security appeared Friday to be preparing to send a new group of Venezuelan men from the U.S. to El Salvador and its notorious CECOT prison, even as lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union scrambled in the courts to stop the administration from moving forward.
On Friday afternoon, at least one charter bus rolled up to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, a town about 200 miles west of Dallas, where the men are being held. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who has been hearing a case related to the flights to El Salvador, scheduled an emergency hearing for Friday evening, to take place just hours after that bus arrived.
Not long before the emergency hearing was scheduled to begin, ACLU attorneys also asked the Supreme Court to step in. The justices ruled earlier this month that the Trump administration can go ahead with removals like this, but that the people being removed must first be given “reasonable time” to challenge their detentions.
At the emergency hearing Friday evening, a lawyer for the government told Boasberg that his understanding was no flights involving the men were going to take place Friday night, and that none were scheduled for Saturday, but that the Department of Homeland Security reserved the right to conduct flights on Saturday.
Boasberg indicated that he thought the ACLU lawyers’ arguments were strong, but declined to rule in their favor and block their clients from being sent out of the U.S., saying, “I just don’t see really how you’re asking me to do anything different from what the Supreme Court told me I couldn’t do.”
NBC News saw the bus and other vehicles leave the detention facility and, accompanied by an entourage of law enforcement vehicles, loop around the airport before returning to the facility after the hearing concluded.
On Thursday night, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt wrote in an emergency overnight court filing that the men at Bluebonnet seemed not to have much time before they would be sent out of the country.
“Petitioners have learned that officers at Bluebonnet have distributed notices under the Alien Enemies Act, (AEA) in English only, that designate Venezuelan men for removal under the act, and have told the men that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow,” Gelernt wrote in the filing.
The Trump administration had in mid-March sent more than 200 men from the U.S. to El Salvador and a megaprison there known for its brutal conditions. Many were removed without being able to inform relatives or attorneys what was happening. The administration alleged all the men were members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang that the administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Relatives of several of the men have publicly disputed the allegations against them.
President Donald Trump earlier this year invoked the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century law that has previously only been used when the U.S. was at war, and declared Tren de Aragua an invading force. His administration has been using that invocation to remove immigrants from the U.S. quickly.
The ACLU had originally challenged the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in a lawsuit filed in Washington. The Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this month was a mixed bag, allowing removals under the act to continue at least temporarily, but also saying that those detained under the act should be allowed to challenge the gang membership allegations against them.
Asked whether deportations from Bluebonnet were imminent, Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, told NBC News on Friday morning, “We are not going to reveal the details of counterterrorism operations, but we are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling.”
