Trump team ordered to return illegally deported Venezuelans after lawyers told judge to ‘pound sand’

A federal judge ordered Donald Trump’s administration to “facilitate” the return of illegally deported Venezuelan men who were sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador last year, saying lawyers for the government told him to “pound sand” when he asked them how they can go about challenging their removal.

“Apparently not interested in participating in this process, the Government’s responses essentially told the Court to pound sand,” District Judge James Boasberg wrote Thursday.

The judge — “mindful of the flagrancy of the Government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed Plaintiffs in this situation” — said he “refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire Defendants propose.”

He directed the government to take “several discrete actions” to begin their return to the United States, where they can file legal challenges against their four-month stint inside the Terrorism Confinement Center, where they say they endured severe physical and psychological abuse and torture.

The judge cited the Supreme Court’s unanimous ruling for the Trump administration to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia after what the justices agreed was an “illegal” removal to that same prison last year.

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“Given what the Supreme Court said in Abrego, if these people were illegally removed ... then the remedy has to be the same as for Abrego,” Boasberg said during a hearing Monday.

Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly remove Venezuelans that immigration authorities accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, though lawyers for the men argued that the administration violated their due process rights by denying them any chance to challenge their abrupt removal.

In July, after four months inside CECOT, the men were sent back to Venezuela as part of a prisoner swap with El Salvador in exchange for U.S. residents held in Venezuelan jails.

During Monday’s hearing, Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing plaintiffs in the case, argued that his clients who made it out of Venezuela and entered a “third country” should have the immediate right to either return to the United States to plead their case or have access to a remote hearing.

The Trump administration must explain by March 13 how it plans to transport any plaintiff seeking their return to the United States from a third country.

It also must explain the “feasibility of returning Plaintiffs still in Venezuela who wish to return for their proceedings” and “describe the steps taken to obtain any passports or identification documents from El Salvador.”

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In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act in March, Trump stated that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”

But government officials later admitted that “many” of those men did not have criminal records, and many were in the country with legal permission and scheduled to appear in court on their asylum claims.

Boasberg had ordered the Trump administration to turn planes around after learning in an emergency lawsuit that officials were flying the men to El Salvador.

The administration resisted, provoking an extraordinary legal battle in which Trump himself demanded the judge’s impeachment.

After they were flown from immigration detention centers in the middle of the night to CECOT, dozens of Venezuelan men were shackled and gang-walked into the brutal maximum-security prison, where their heads were shaved, and then stuffed into jail cells.

They were not allowed to speak with families or lawyers, and they never stepped foot outside.

For weeks, government attorneys and administration officials claimed that the United States did not have jurisdiction over the men they sent to El Salvador, but court filings revealed that authorities in that country told the United Nations that the “legal responsibility for these people lie exclusively” with the U.S. government.

Officials appeared to be using them as a bargaining chip in a prisoner exchange, and on July 18, following trilateral negotiations with the U.S., Salvadoran and Venezuelan governments, more than 250 Venezuelans jailed inside the facility were returned to their home country, and several Americans were returned from Venezuela’s custody to the United States.

In lawsuits and interviews following their release, the men revealed the “physical, verbal and psychological abuse” they said they endured, including routine beatings from guards using their fists and batons.