Venezuelan in ICE detention ‘barricaded’ doorways and ‘threatened to take hostages, ‘Trump crew alleges | EUROtoday

In its newest demand to the Supreme Court to start swiftly deporting immigrants from the United States, Donald Trump’s administration claims a bunch of Venezuelan males imprisoned in Texas tried to barricade themselves inside their unit, lined surveillance cameras and threatened to take hostages.

A bunch of 23 males the administration accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members “have proven difficult to manage,” in response to a sworn assertion in court docket paperwork from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.

In an incident on April 23 that has not beforehand been reported, the lads allegedly “refused their breakfast trays and barricaded both the front and rear entrance doors of their housing unit using bed cots” and “covered the surveillance cameras and blocked the housing unit windows.”

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They “threatened to take hostages and injure facility contract staff and ICE officers” and “attempted to flood the housing unit by clogging toilets,” in response to Joshua D. Johnson, appearing ICE director for the Dallas workplace.

On May 4, these 23 males had been moved from the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson to the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado — beneath a distinct court docket jurisdiction that immigrants’ proper attorneys say is extra favorable to the Trump administration.

In its submitting on May 12, the federal government argues that the alleged incident reveals the “dangers” posed by Tren de Aragua members whereas in detention relatively than summarily deporting them.

The episode follows just a few public glimpses into the lives of the immigrants detained at Bluebonnet, the place drone footage from Reuters captured a bunch of males in pink jail jumpsuits — which designates them as high-risk inmates — spelling out “SOS” with their our bodies.

Another picture captures a bunch holding up an indication that reads, in Spanish, “Help, we want to be deported. We are not terrorists.” The signal says “VZLA,” a reference to Venezuela, and suggests they’re pleading with authorities to keep away from their imprisonment in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, labeled by human rights teams as a “tropical gulag” and focus camp.

A lawyer for the ACLU representing immigrants in detention declined to remark.

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Nearly two months after deporting dozens of Venezuelan immigrants to the Salvadoran jail, the Trump administration is embroiled in courtroom battles throughout the nation — and on the nation’s highest court docket — following challenges to the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to quickly take away alleged gang members from the nation.

The Supreme Court has issued two orders stemming from these instances. Justices agreed that the president might depend on the centuries-old wartime legislation to take away immigrants from the nation — offered they first have a possibility to problem these claims in court docket. The justices additionally briefly blocked the federal government from deporting a bunch of Venezuelan immigrants in Texas whereas their legal professionals scrambled to problem the allegations in opposition to them.

In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump said that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua]are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”

But the administration has admitted that “many” of the 137 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador in March didn’t have prison data, and attorneys and members of the family say their purchasers and relations — a few of whom had been within the nation with authorized permission and have upcoming court docket hearings on their asylum claims — don’t have anything to do with Tren de Aragua.

Under the phrases of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the president has authority to take away immigrants throughout a “declared war” or if there’s an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by “any foreign nation or government.”

Several federal judges — together with a Trump appointee — have stated the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act is illegal, and wrongly makes use of immigration as an excuse to subvert the plain readings of struggle, invasion and predatory incursion.

A just lately uncovered intelligence memo from the Trump administration additionally denies any hyperlink between Nicolas Maduro’s regime and Tren de Aragua, noting that the intelligence neighborhood has “not observed the regime directing TDA, including to push migrants to the United States, which probably would require extensive coordination and funding between regime entities and TDA leaders.”

Lawyers for detained immigrants instructed the Supreme Court final month that the administration is failing to supply enough discover of their removing, and “comes nowhere near” satisfying the court docket’s order.

“Whatever due process may require in this context, it does not allow removing a person to a possible life sentence without trial, in a prison known for torture and other abuse, a mere 24 hours after providing an English-only notice form (not provided to any attorney) that gives no information about the person’s right to seek judicial review, much less the process or timeline for doing so,” attorneys wrote.