A federal judge on Monday ordered that two immigrants from Venezuela detained at the GEO detention facility in Aurora must be kept in the United States until they can have a court hearing next week.
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney granted a temporary restraining order against immigration officials on behalf of two men identified only by their initials as D.B.U., 32, and R.M.M., 25. Both are Venezuelan men who the American Civil Liberties Union argued are at “immediate risk” for removal to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act.
The Trump administration has declared an emergency and is bypassing normal immigration procedures to remove some Venezuelan immigrants.
Both men came to the U.S. to flee the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, or TdA, and were not members of it, lawyers for the ACLU said. The federal government characterized them both as members of the gang because of a party they attended and their tattoos, according to court filings.
The ACLU lawyers argued D.B.U. has a single tattoo, his niece’s name, which is unrelated to anything gang-related. He fled Venezuela because he was persecuted and imprisoned for political activity, his lawyers said. R.M.M. has a similar story and fled Venezuela after two family members were killed by members of TdA. His tattoos include his mother’s name, his birth year, a pattern, a religious symbol and a character from the board game Monopoly, according to court filings.
“But they have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua,” his lawyers said in their original request for a restraining order.
Last week, a Texas judge blocked the deportation of several suspected Venezuelan gang members to an El Salvadoran prison, but the U.S. Supreme Court lifted that order. The high court did, however, say unanimously that the detainees deserved notice that they were being removed under the Alien Enemies Act and an opportunity to challenge their deportations under U.S. due process before they were moved out of the country.
The Salvadoran prisons are infamous for abuse.
“Experts on El Salvador have also explained how those removed there face grave harm and torture at the Salvadoran Terrorism Confinement Center (“CECOT”), including electric shocks, beating, waterboarding, and use of implements of torture on detainees’ fingers,” according to the Colorado court filing. “These abusive conditions are life threatening, as demonstrated by the hundreds of people who have died in Salvadoran prisons. Worse, those removed and detained at CECOT face indefinite detention.”
Sweeney scheduled a hearing on the case for next week. The Colorado filing is part of a larger class action effort the ACLU is taking on behalf of Venezuelan detainees across the country.
“The government has secretly rushed the men out of the country and has provided petitioners with no information about the class,” the Colorado filing said. “But evidence since the flights on March 15 increasingly shows that many class members removed to El Salvador are not “members” of TdA; many have no ties to TdA at all.”
ACLU of Colorado lawyers continued, “the false accusations are particularly devastating given petitioners’ strong claims for relief under our immigration laws.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did a spokesperson at the Colorado U.S. Attorney’s Office.
