Federal judge temporarily blocks Trump’s use of Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans from Colorado
A federal judge in Denver has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from using the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants being held in Colorado.
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney approved a temporary restraining order Monday night after the American Civil Liberties Union sued President Donald Trump and members of his administration on behalf of two Venezuelan men, referred to only by their initials, “and others similarly situated” who have been accused of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang.
For two weeks, the federal government is barred from using the Alien Enemies Act to remove plaintiffs D.B.U, R.M.M. and any other noncitizens accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang from both the state and the country.
“This ruling is a critical step toward restoring the rule of law in the face of a rogue administration that has shown utter disregard for the Constitution,” Raquel Lane-Arellano, the communications manager at the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition, said Tuesday.
The judge’s order will remain in effect until a hearing is held in the case in Denver on April 21.
The White House did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday.
Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in March, proclaiming Venezuelans who are members of TdA and not lawful residents of the U.S. “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed as Alien Enemies.” The administration has used the act to send immigrants — including at least one Venezuelan who had been detained in Colorado — to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.
The act has been used only three other times in American history, most recently to intern Japanese-American citizens during World War II.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled last week that anyone being deported under the declaration deserved a hearing in federal court first.
That led federal judges in New York and Texas to place temporary holds on deportations in those areas until Trump’s Republican administration presented a procedure for allowing such appeals. Sweeney’s order follows in their footsteps.
The Colorado order also comes as the ACLU warned, in an emergency filing, that the Trump administration as recently as Monday night may have been preparing Venezuelan men in custody in Aurora for another deportation flight.
The civil rights organization’s attorneys said they had received reports Monday that Venezuelan men being held at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s contract detention facility who were accused of being affiliated with the TdA gang “were rousted from bed and told that they would be leaving.”
The men repeatedly asked where they would be taken, and ICE agents allegedly refused to answer, ACLU officials said in the document. The flight was later canceled and, as of Tuesday morning, the men remained in Colorado, the attorneys said.
Colorado immigrant advocacy groups applauded the ACLU’s legal challenge to the Alien Enemies Act and the judge’s order.
“The disappearance of our neighbors to a notorious prison without due process should be a wake-up call to the people of the United States,” said Jennifer Piper, the program director for the Colorado office of the American Friends Service Committee.
She added that the Trump administration is asking Congress to triple the budget for immigration detention from $25 billion to more than $60 billion — a request her group opposes.
“We hope that, as a country, we can do more than sending people to foreign prisons,” said Andrea Loya, the executive director of Aurora-based nonprofit Casa de Paz, on Tuesday. “We urge the federal government to make it right for the people they sent to El Salvador without due process.”
The Trump administration’s implementation of the Alien Enemies Act and the lawsuits that followed have become a flashpoint as more than 200 alleged TdA members have been sent from the U.S. to the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El Salvador, escalating tension between the White House and federal courts.
Inmates in El Salvadoran prisons face “life-threatening conditions, persecution and torture,” ACLU officials argued in court documents. That constitutes “irreparable harm,” they said.
D.B.U., a 31-year-old man who fled Venezuela after he was imprisoned for his political activity and protesting against the Venezuelan government, was arrested in January during a raid of what law enforcement and immigration officials have repeatedly called a “Tren de Aragua party” in Adams County.
The Drug Enforcement Administration said 41 people arrested that night were living in Colorado illegally and claimed dozens were connected to the TdA gang. None of those people were criminally charged.
According to the ACLU, D.B.U. was identified as a gang member based on a tattoo of his niece’s name — his only tattoo. He “vehemently denied” being a TdA member.
The second plaintiff in the lawsuit, 25-year-old R.M.M., fled Venezuela after two members of his family were killed by the TdA gang. ACLU officials said in the lawsuit he was afraid the gang would also kill him, his wife and his children.
R.M.M. was detained in March after federal agents saw him standing with other Hispanic men near their cars outside a Colorado residence that law enforcement believed was connected to the TdA gang, according to court records. Like D.B.U., R.M.M. was identified as a gang member based on his tattoos, including one of his birth year, one of his mother’s name, one of “religious significance” and a character from the Monopoly board game.
He is not and never has been a member of TdA, ACLU officials wrote in court documents.
The ACLU claims Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is invalid because the TdA gang is not a “foreign nation or government,” and there has been no “invasion or predatory incursion” — both of which are required to invoke the act.
“Criminal activity does not meet the longstanding definitions of those statutory requirements,” ACLU officials said in the lawsuit. “Thus, the government’s attempt to summarily remove Venezuelan noncitizens exceeds the wartime authority that Congress delegated in the AEA.”
In addition to Trump, the Colorado lawsuit names U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Acting Director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Todd Lyons, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Director of the Denver Field Office for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Robert Gaudian and Denver Contract Detention Facility warden Dawn Ceja.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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