The court hearing revives the legal battle on Trump’s Venezuelan deportations

US District Judge James Boasberg put pressure on Thursday from the Ministry of Justice on the status and place of more than 250 American migrants expelled from Cecot to Venezuela, in order to weigh the opportunities, if necessary, that the court must order their return.

Boasberg has been at the center of the radical immigration case since March 15, when he has published an emergency order blocking the use by the Trump Administration of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act, a War Immigration Act of 1798, to expel certain migrants to Salvador. Despite order, hundreds of migrants were expelled to Salvadoral prison, Cecot, in March, where they stayed until last week, when they were sent from Salvador prison to Venezuela, as part of an exchange of prisoners with the United States

Boasberg used Thursday’s audience to focus mainly on the status of 252 Venezuelan migrants now under the care of the Government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. He pressed the ACLU lawyer, Lee Genernt, who represents the class of Cecot migrants, to find out if they had been in contact with the individuals sent from Cecot to Venezuela and their current status.

Genernt said Thursday that if migrants seem to be “delighted” to be out of the Cecot guard, which he described in court as a “chamber of torture”, he said that they had not been able to get in touch with the majority of people detained for treatment when they arrived in Venezuela.

He also quoted new concerns about their status as a guard in the country, noting that “many, if not most”, of the people expelled from the United States in El Salvador in March had been in the United States in search of Venezuela asylum.

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Judge James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the DC Federal District Court, represents a portrait at the E. Barrett Federal Justice Palace in Washington, DC, March 16, 2023. (Carolyn Van Houten / The Washington Post via Getty Images)

The Trump administration has not provided, to date, a list of migrants sent to Cecot in March, or details on their immigration status in the United States before withdrawal.

The lawyer for the Ministry of Justice, Tiberius Davis, told court earlier Thursday that the speeches on prisoners began earlier this year when Maduro contacted President Salvadoran Nayib Bukele to launch discussions. Conversations have suddenly blocked, he said, noting that the two countries “hate each other” and have relaunched with the United States as an intermediary.

That, he said, coupled to the fact that the 10 American prisoners released from Venezuela were sent to Salvador, then to the United States, showed that the United States “have no constructive guard.” Boasberg did not support them for details.

Boasberg, however, tried to assess government compliance before any future actions or decisions.

Asked Thursday if the Ministry of Justice would comply with the orders of the court, Davis said that they “if it were a legal order”. They also said they would likely request an appeal to a higher court.

Boasberg has been eager to continue in a new contempt procedure. He took shade by the lack of action of the American Court of Appeal for the DC circuit, which had suspended his initial request in April.

He then judged that the court had found “a probable cause” to hold the Trump administration with an outrage for having failed to return the planes to the American soil, in accordance with its emergency order, and declared that the court had determined that the Trump administration had demonstrated a “deliberate contempt” for its order.

On Thursday, he saw this again, noting that the assertions made by the former MJ lawyer and denunciator Erez Reuveni “only strengthened the case for contempt”.

The hearing finally ended quickly, Boasberg ordering the government and the migrant lawyers to submit a joint update of the court on Thursday, August 7, and ordered them to continue doing so every two weeks after the court was otherwise.

In June, Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to provide all the non-citizens expelled from the United States to a maximum security prison in El Salvador for the possibility of asking for the tribunal Habeas and challenging their alleged gang status. This was also invoked before the Superior Court.

Addressing journalists outside the court on Thursday, the ACLU lawyer, Lee Genernt, characterized the response of the Trump administration at the status hearing as “the least” of what they should do to grant regular procedure to the class of the complainants of Cecot now in Venezuela.

“Since there has been a constitutional violation, it is remarkable that the US government will not simply bring individuals without a prescription for the court,” Genernt told Fox News.

“I have been doing this job for over 30 years,” he said. “It is difficult for me to imagine an earlier administration, a democrat or a republican, without agreeing to simply bring the individuals when there have been constitutional violations and that individuals have suffered so much and continue to be in danger.”

The Trump administration asks the Supreme Court to review the El Salvador expulsion affair

President Donald Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi arrive to speak to the Ministry of Justice in Washington, DC (Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty)

The brief audience occurs while Boasberg found himself at the Center for Trump’s anger and at the attacks on the so-called “activists” judges this year, following his temporary prohibition prescription of March 15 who sought to block the use by Trump of the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act for quickly expel hundreds of poisonian nationals in El Salvador earlier this year.

Boasberg ordered all planes for El Salvador to be “immediately” returned to American soil, which did not happen.

The emergency ordinance addressed a complex legal saga which finally generated dozens of federal judicial disputes across the country – although that brought before its court on March 15 was the very first – and then encouraged the Supreme Court to reign, on two separate occasions, according to the The American Constitution.

Boasberg, consequently, became the man at the center of legal benefits.

Although the ordinance itself was a bit of a relaxation scheme – since the Court of Appeals Circuit American stayed when he agreed to review the decision – Thursday’s hearing may well relaunch the fight against the court bitterly.

Trump administration officials have repeatedly exclaimed Boasberg as a “militant judge” – a term they used for judges who have paused or blocked the priorities of Trump’s policy adopted by decree. Trump himself launched the idea that Boasberg could be charged earlier this year – which prompted the chief judge of the Supreme Court, John Roberts, to issue a rare public warning.

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The order of 69 pages of Boasberg began by invoking the “trial” of Franz Kafka, in which the protagonist, Josef K., wakes up to find two strange men outside his room, who proceed to stop him for unpertified crimes.

“This was the situation in which Ferngel Reyes Mota, Andry Jose Hernandez Romero, and dozens of other non-Citoyans Venezuelans say they were plunged on March 15, 2025,” said Boasberg.

Thursday’s hearing comes in the middle of a wave of new reports and allegations submitted by the applicants in the case in order to reopen the discovery.