Venezuelan Government Hires Lawyers To Defend Migrants As Fate Of Those Deported to El Salvador Remains Murky

The Trump administration invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport undocumented Venezuelan migrants it alleged were part of the gang Tren de Aragua to a mega-prison in El Salvador. So far, little is known about their legal status.

The Trump administration invoked the 18th century law to swiftly deport hundreds of Venezuelans with little to no due process. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued an order right after the deportations, temporarily blocking them, a move that the White House did not follow arguing that the migrants were already in international waters.

For now, Boasberg is trying to determine whether the U.S. government willingly ignored his decision to return the migrants to the U.S. and let them defend themselves in the allegations that they were gang members, which the Trump administration provided no evidence of.

Since the migrants were taken to El Salvador, little has been known about their whereabouts, their stay at CECOT— El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele's mega-prison—, or their overall legal status. But that may soon change, The Associated Press reports.

The Venezuelan government has hired lawyers to take legal action on behalf of the prisoners, seeking their release from the prison. Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans, said they filed the habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court's Constitutional Chamber. He said that by extension they requested that it be applied to all Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.

Salvador Rios, another lawyer with the firm, said they were contracted by the Venezuelan government and the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela. He said the Venezuelans they represent are not members of the Tren de Aragua and had migrated from their country and "don't have any criminal record."

El Salvador hasn't had diplomatic relations with Venezuela since 2019, so the Venezuelans imprisoned there do not have any consular support from their government either.

Bukele announced the day after their arrival that the U.S. had sent what he called "238 members of the Venezuelan criminal organization Tren de Aragua" to El Salvador and they were immediately sent to its maximum security gang prison. The U.S. government would pay an annual fee for their incarceration, Bukele wrote in a post on X.

Lawyer David Morales, legal director for the nongovernmental organization Cristobal, said there was no legal basis for the Venezuelans' imprisonment in El Salvador. He said he knew of no Salvadoran law or international treaty that would support their imprisonment.

"They are illegal detentions because they haven't been submitted to the jurisdiction of a Salvadoran judge, nor have they been prosecuted or convicted in El Salvador," he said. As such, their imprisonment in the country is "arbitrary."

He added that El Salvador's prosecutor's office for human rights would have the authority to intervene, because it has a broad mandate when it comes to prisoners, "but we already know that it's not playing its role because it is dominated, subjected to political power."

Traditionally, taking prisoners out of CECOT is extremely difficult. El Salvador has lived under a state of emergency since March 2022, when the country's Congress granted Bukele extraordinary powers to fight the country's powerful street gangs.

Since then, some 84,000 people have been arrested, accused of gang ties. Bukele has said some 8,000 prisoners have been freed for lack of evidence, but many more have found no way out.