Judge temporarily stops west Texas immigrant deportations under Alien Enemies Act
A federal judge in west Texas joined other courts in temporarily blocking the deportations of Venezuelan immigrants under an 18th-century wartime law known as the Alien Enemies Act.
U.S. District Judge David Briones in El Paso, Texas, issued the ruling Friday while he ordered the release of a couple accused of being members of a Venezuelan criminal gang. Briones wrote that government lawyers 바카라 게임 웹사이트have not demonstrated they have any lawful basis" to continue detaining the couple on a suspected alien enemy violation.
A message left with an attorney for the couple wasn바카라 게임 웹사이트t immediately returned Saturday.
The couple is accused of being part of Tren de Aragua, which the Trump administration has designated a foreign terrorist organization. Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act from 1798 that lets the president deport noncitizens who are from a country with which the U.S. is at war.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked, for now, the deportations of any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under the act. The high court also ruled anyone being deported under Trump's declaration deserved a hearing in federal court first and are given 바카라 게임 웹사이트a reasonable time바카라 게임 웹사이트 to contest their pending removals.
Briones' ruling applies only to Venezuelan immigrants in federal custody in his judicial district. Federal judges in Colorado, south Texas and New York previously issued similar rulings. Briones ordered the government to give a 21-day notice before attempting to remove anyone in west Texas 바카라 게임 웹사이트 in contrast to the 12 hours that the government contends is sufficient.
The El Paso case comes as the Trump administration and local authorities clash over the president바카라 게임 웹사이트s sweeping immigration crackdown. Briones' ruling occurred the same day as the FBI바카라 게임 웹사이트s arrest of a Milwaukee judge accused of helping a man evade immigration authorities.
Briones, who was nominated to the court in 1994 by President Bill Clinton, said that 바카라 게임 웹사이트due process requirements for the removal of noncitizens are long established바카라 게임 웹사이트 under the Immigration and Nationality Act as well as previous U.S. Supreme Court rulings.
바카라 게임 웹사이트There is no doubt the Executive Branch바카라 게임 웹사이트s unprecedented peacetime use of wartime power has caused chaos and uncertainty for individual petitions as well as the judicial branch in how to manage and evaluate the Executive바카라 게임 웹사이트s claims of Tren de Aragua membership, and the invocation of the Alien Enemies Act as a whole,바카라 게임 웹사이트 Briones wrote.
The couple, Julio Cesar Sanchez Puentes and Luddis Norelia Sanchez Garcia, was granted temporary protected status after entering the United States from Mexico in October 2022. They were notified that their status was terminated on April 1.
They were arrested April 16 at the El Paso airport as the couple prepared to return to their home in Washington, D.C., where they live with their three children. They had flown to Texas for an April 14 pretrial hearing related to removal proceedings. That case was continued until June 23, and the couple was allowed to remain free on bail, according to court documents.