The federal judge in New York will consider blocking future deportations under the alien enemies law
Less than 48 hours after the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit that challenges the use of President Donald Trump of the Alien Enemies Law to deport non -citizens with little or less process, a federal judge in New York on Wednesday will consider blocking any other silent, since the Trump administration supposedly prepares to begin more deportations.
American District Judge Alvin Hellerstein established an audience on Wednesday to consider issuing an emergency order to block the moving of two Venezuelan men attacked for deportation, as well as potentially any deportation of non -citizens detained under the Alien enemies law.
Last month, the Trump administration invoked the AEA to deport more than 200 alleged members of migrant gangs to El Salvador arguing that the Venezuelan gang Train of Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
In a brief presented on Tuesday in New York, the AGU lawyers representing two migrants accused by the government of being members of Aragua’s train wrote that the authorities “seek to move the petitioners in secret, without due process, a prison in El Salvador known for terrible conditions, torture and other forms of physical abuse, possibly for life.”
“This has already confirmed more than 130 people on March 15 who have lost all contact with their lawyers, their family and the world,” the lawyers wrote.
While the Supreme Court suggested on Monday that future litigation would be held in a Federal Court of Texas, the lawyers of the men presented a case of habeas in New York because both are currently in custody in Orange County, New York, after their deportations were blocked last month by a judge in Washington DC.
According to the lawyers of the ACLU, one of the men is a 21 -year -old Venezuelan citizen who entered the United States in 2024 to seek asylum, fleeing the threats of a Aragua train and the possible persecution of the Maduro regime based on their sexual orientation.
The prisoners exercise in a block of cells protected by prison officers at the Maximum Security Penitentiary Center for Housing Terrorism Obligation, April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.
Alex Pena/Getty Images
The other plaintiff is a 32 -year -old Venezuelan citizen who filed an asylum application after entering the United States in 2022, claiming that he feared torture and imprisonment based on his protests of the Maduro regime.
Judge Hellerstein, a designated Clinton, ordered Tuesday that the two men were not withdrawn from New York “unless the Court orders otherwise”, and the ACLU seeks to obtain a temporary restriction order that potentially covers any non -citizen in immigration custody that is at risk of deportation by virtue of the law of enemies alien enemies.
They have argued that the law was incorrectly invoked by the Trump to attack a criminal organization, not a state actor, and was invoked outside a war or an invasion.
“The AEA has only been one power invoked in war time, and clearly only applies to war actions: it cannot be used here against the nationals of a country, Venezuela, with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and that has not launched a predicative incursion in the United States,” the laws argued, “argued the Leies.
