El Paso immigration judge Michael S. Pleters was incredulous. He had expected to hear a request from Henrry Albornoz Quintero for political asylum in the U.S., but though the Venezuelan had been held by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, he was absent the day of his April hearing.
{snip}
{snip} Albornoz was among hundreds of men accused of being gang members and shipped to a superprison in El Salvador. He had never been charged with a crime, nor ordered deported, but officials contend that under an 18th-century law he could be shipped to a foreign prison without a hearing.
“They need to read the Alien Enemies Act,” Border Czar Tom Homan said in an interview, referring to the 1798 law that permits extrajudicial removal of citizens of a country at war with the U.S. {snip}
Seven weeks since the Trump administration promoted flashy videos of the men being marched into El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, their imprisonments have upended the right to a day in court afforded everyone, including noncitizens, under the Constitution.
“I can’t have a trial, a major trial, for every person that came in illegally,” President Trump told ABC News this month, saying that the men sent to the prison, known as Cecot, were violent gang members.
White House adviser Stephen Miller said last week that the administration is looking at suspending habeas corpus, which protects individuals from unlawful detention, as part of its immigration crackdown.
The government’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to sidestep even the limited due process provided by regular immigration court is now rippling through the U.S. court system, where several judges have ruled its use this way is unlawful, in a series of cases testing the extent of the administration’s power.
{snip}
Dozens of the migrants sent to El Salvador had never been accused of a crime, according to a Wall Street Journal review of public databases and interviews with the men’s family members and attorneys. Many were accused of being part of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua when a single federal agent noticed a tattoo, government paperwork and witness accounts indicate. {snip}
{snip}
At least 14 of the men sent to El Salvador had been charged with crimes in the U.S. ranging from shoplifting to assault, according to the Journal’s analysis. Two are wanted for serious crimes in South America, but the Trump administration disregarded extradition requests and sent the men to El Salvador instead, according to local prosecutors.
Trump has floated the idea of sending U.S. citizens to Cecot. It is already the largest prison in the world, and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele plans to double its size. Previously, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem urged Bukele to accept non-Salvadoran migrants from the U.S. awaiting deportation to their home countries.
{snip}
Noem said that Bukele vowed the men sent from the U.S. would be imprisoned permanently. “He said ‘Absolutely, I will take as many as you want to send me,’” she recalled. “‘When they go into Cecot, they will never leave.’”
{snip}
Judges in South Texas, Colorado and southern New York have blocked removals under the act of migrants detained there, and the Supreme Court last month indefinitely barred the removal of a group of Venezuelan migrants detained in northern Texas.
The three lower-court judges also found that foreign gang members in the U.S.—even violent ones—weren’t equivalent to an invasion by an enemy nation and couldn’t legally justify use of the Alien Enemies Act. On Tuesday a judge in Pennsylvania ruled that the administration can deport alleged gang members under the act but said the government needs to provide them with an adequate opportunity to challenge those removals.
{snip}
The post Trump’s Immigration Crackdown Clashes With Right to Due Process appeared first on American Renaissance.
American Renaissance
