A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that the Trump administration must give more than 100 migrants sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador a chance to challenge their deportations. US District Chief Judge James Boasberg said people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven't been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges, the AP reports.
The judge wrote that "significant evidence" has surfaced indicating that many of the migrants imprisoned in El Salvador are not connected to the gang "and thus languish in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations." Boasberg gave the administration one week to come up with a manner in which the "at least 137" people can make those claims, even while they're formally in the custody of El Salvador, per the AP. It's the latest turn in the monthslong legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador's notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.
After Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in March and prepared to fly planeloads of accused gang members to El Salvador and out of the jurisdiction of US courts, Boasberg ordered that the planes turn around. The demand was ignored. The US Supreme Court later ruled that anyone targeted under the act has the right to appeal to a judge to contest their designation as an enemy of the state. Boasberg, in his latest ruling, wrote that he was simply applying that principle to those who'd been removed.
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