US Judge to Consider Ordering Trump to Return Venezuelans From El Salvador

A U.S. judge on Wednesday is due to consider whether to order Republican President Donald Trump's administration to facilitate the return to the U.S. of Venezuelan migrants detained in El Salvador, potentially opening a new front in a major challenge to Trump's aggressive deportation policy.

Washington D.C.-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg will hear arguments from the American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing the Venezuelans, and the Justice Department at a hearing at 5 p.m. ET.

While the administration has been blocked from deporting more Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law, Wednesday's hearing is the first time a judge will consider a bid to return a group of migrants already detained in El Salvador.

Any order from Boasberg for Trump to facilitate the migrants' return could spark a fresh confrontation between the executive and judicial branches of government, which are co-equal under the U.S. Constitution. Democrats and some legal observers say the administration has dragged its feet in complying with court rulings, prompting concerns about a constitutional crisis.

Trump in March called for Boasberg to be impeached after he ordered the government to turn around deportation flights carrying the migrants so he could evaluate whether their deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act were lawful. That prompted a rare rebuke from U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts, who said appeals, not impeachments, were the proper response to unfavorable court decisions.

Despite the judge's order, at least 137 Venezuelans who the administration alleges belong to the Tren de Aragua gang were handed over to authorities in El Salvador, where they are being held in a mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. Washington is paying the Central American country's government $6 million to house them.

Relatives of many of the men and their lawyers deny gang membership, and say they were not given the chance to contest the administration's assertions.

In invoking the Alien Enemies Act to speed up the deportations of alleged Tren de Aragua members, Trump said the gang was "conducting irregular warfare" against the U.S. at the direction of socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.