A Federal court orders plan to allow migrants to return or challenge deportations.
On Monday, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ruled that the administration of President Donald Trump denied due process to nearly 200 Venezuelans it deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), a high-security prison in El Salvador.
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Boasberg gave the Trump administration until Jan. 5 to present a plan to allow the immigrants to return to the U.S. or to be given the opportunity to defend their cases before a judge.
The judge also certified a class-action lawsuit, clearing the way for all migrants sent to CECOT in March to challenge their designation as enemies of the United States.
Trump invoked the 1789 Alien Enemies Act, a law used in wartime, to send the Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, accusing them — without presenting evidence — of belonging to Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal gang designated as a terrorist organization.
“This court declares that the plaintiffs should not have been expelled in the manner in which they were, virtually without notice and without an opportunity to challenge the basis for their removal, in clear contravention of their due process rights,” Boasberg wrote in his ruling.
You can watch the 60 minutes CECOT video here:https://t.co/blLwnf1pOy
— Star Cheeses (@StarCheesee) December 23, 2025
The lawsuit was filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, which argued that the deportation was illegal and that El Salvador imprisoned the Venezuelans in exchange for payment.
“Expedited removal cannot be permitted to nullify habeas corpus. If the mere act of secretly transferring people to another country were enough to extinguish habeas corpus, then ‘the government could kidnap anyone off the street, hand them over to a foreign country and thereby foreclose any possibility of legal recourse,’” Boasberg said in his decision.
The case related to the Alien Enemies Act has placed the Trump administration under scrutiny for exposing violations of due process protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
After months of pressure from the immigrants’ families, the Venezuelans were sent back to their home country in July as part of an exchange between the United States and the Bolivarian government led by President Nicolas Maduro.
Boasberg is also investigating whether the Trump administration officials violated a court order he issued barring deportation flights to El Salvador.
BREAKING: CBS just pulled its own 60 Minutes report exposing torture at El Salvador’s CECOT prison, a facility where Venezuelans were secretly sent instead of deported.
Bari Weiss now runs CBS.
Watch what they didn’t want you to see. pic.twitter.com/OfIuyjxoiR
— Brian Allen (@allenanalysis) December 21, 2025
In November, Boasberg said he would call at least two people connected to the case to testify: Erez Reuveni, a Justice Department whistleblower who was fired, and Drew Ensign, a DOE attorney whom Reuveni accused of misleading the court about the migrant flights.
In his first opinion, spanning more than 40 pages, the judge accused the executive branch of having ignored with “complete disregard” a court order instructing it to reverse the transfer of migrants to the Central American country.
“The Constitution does not tolerate the intentional disobedience of judicial orders, especially by officials who have sworn to uphold it,” Boasberg wrote in his April ruling.
Over the deportation of immigrants to El Salvador, the White House is also engaged in another legal dispute involving Salvadoran national Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was expelled along with the Venezuelans and later returned to the United States by court order.
In her daily morning #pressconference, the President of #Mexico, Claudia Sheinbaum, condemned the criminalization of #migrants, stating that the best way to reduce mass migration is to #invest in the countries of origin. pic.twitter.com/gjFsOy90FM
— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) December 18, 2025
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Source: EFE
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