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DOCUMENT CASTS DOUBT ON WHITE HOUSE’S CLAIMS ABOUT DEPORTED
VENEZUELANS  
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Alan Feuer
July 7, 2025
The New York Times
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_ The document from El Salvador seems to undermine a position that
lawyers for the Justice Department and top Trump officials have taken
time and again in front of a judge in Washington. _

Prison guards at the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, in El
Salvador in March. , Fred Ramos for The New York Times

 

For the past several months, the Trump administration has insisted in
court that it has no control over the nearly 140 Venezuelan immigrants
it deported to a prison in El Salvador this spring under the powers of
a rarely used wartime statute.

Both in filings and at hearings, Trump officials have asserted that
because the men are being held by jailers in El Salvador, the
Salvadoran government has control over their fate. The administration
has repeatedly made that claim to argue that it has no real authority
to bring the immigrants back itself.

On Monday, however, lawyers for the Venezuelan men produced a
document
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that the government of El Salvador recently told the United Nations
that it, in fact, bears no legal responsibility for the men. The
document, written in response to a U.N. inquiry examining some of the
deportations, also claimed that the Salvadoran government was merely
doing the United States’ bidding when it accepted the men into its
prison system.

“The actions of the state of El Salvador have been limited to the
implementation of a bilateral cooperation mechanism with another
state, through which it has facilitated the use of the Salvadoran
prison infrastructure for the custody of persons detained within the
scope of the justice system and law enforcement of that other
state,” the document said.

“In this context,” it went on, “the jurisdiction and legal
responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent
foreign authorities, by virtue of international agreements signed and
in accordance with the principles of sovereignty and international
cooperation in criminal matters.”

Judge James E. Boasberg has ordered the Trump administration to take
steps to provide due process to the Venezuelan men who were deported
to El Salvador in March. Valerie Plesch/Bloomberg

The document was included in a new court filing submitted to Judge
James E. Boasberg, who has been hearing a long-running legal case
brought by the Venezuelan men in Federal District Court in Washington.
As part of that case, Judge Boasberg ordered the Trump administration
last month
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take steps toward providing the men with the due process they were
denied when the White House deported them to El Salvador under the
expansive powers of the wartime law, known as the Alien Enemies Act.

The document could present a problem for the administration because it
seems to undermine a position that lawyers for the Justice Department
and top Trump officials have taken time and again in front of Judge
Boasberg. The lawyers for the Venezuelans also claimed that department
lawyers knew about the document for months but failed to inform either
them or the judge.

“We are pleased that El Salvador publicly told the truth about what
we all knew: that it’s the United States that controls the fate of
the Venezuelans,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil
Liberties Union, which, along with another legal group, Democracy
Forward, has been representing the men. “That the United States did
not provide us or the court with this information is extraordinary."

Skye Perryman, the president and chief executive of Democracy Forward,
added, “The documents filed with the court today show that the
administration has not been honest with the court or the American
people.”

A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to an email
seeking comment.

The underlying agreement between the Trump administration and the
government of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador first began to
attract attention after the White House deported scores of Venezuelans
accused of being members of the street gang Tren de Aragua to El
Salvador on March 15.

An investigation by The New York Times
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found that the U.S. government not only paid Mr. Bukele's
administration millions of dollars as part of the deal, but also added
an extra sweetener at his request: the return to El Salvador of top
leaders in a different street gang, MS-13, some of whom had knowledge
of his corrupt relations with the group.

The case in front of Judge Boasberg is just one of the many legal
skirmishes between the A.C.L.U. and the Trump administration over
President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act. Shortly after he
returned to office, Mr. Trump issued a proclamation invoking the act
to deport Venezuelans accused of being members of Tren de Aragua,
which he has designated as a foreign terrorist organization.

Federal courts around the country have been divided on the issue of
whether he has properly used the law, which was first passed in 1798
and is meant to be employed only in times of declared war or during an
invasion by a hostile foreign nation.

Last week, a federal appeals court in New Orleans held its own
hearing
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the president’s proclamation in a case that is likely to be the
first to end up at the Supreme Court
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The justices have already decided that the White House failed to give
immigrants ample opportunity to challenge their removals under the
act. But they have yet to rule on whether Mr. Trump’s claims that
the presence of Tren de Aragua in the United States is tantamount to
an invasion and that its members have been acting at the behest of a
hostile Venezuelan government comport with reality.

When Judge Boasberg ordered the administration to work toward giving
due process to the Venezuelan men even though they remain locked up at
the so-called Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, his instructions
came in a sweeping — and at times outraged — ruling that compared
them to characters in a Kafka novel.

The judge asserted that the White House had effectively stripped the
men of their rights by not allowing them to contest their deportations
before they were flown into the custody of Salvadoran jailers. But he
did not weigh in on the larger question of whether Mr. Trump had
invoked the Alien Enemies Act lawfully when he expelled the men to El
Salvador.

Judge Boasberg also grappled in his ruling with the critical issue of
who had control over the men at CECOT — Mr. Bukele’s government,
which received them at the prison, or the United States government,
which sent them there.

 

While the judge acknowledged that it was “a close question,” he
eventually determined that “the United States and El Salvador have
struck a diplomatic bargain vis-à-vis the detainees” and that he
could not second-guess the Trump administration’s assertions that
the Salvadorans were in charge.

Still, Judge Boasberg expressed a measure of skepticism, pointing out
that several top Trump officials had publicly stated that the
administration was deeply involved in the plans to hold the men at the
terrorism center.

It remains unclear what effect, if any, the new document could have on
Judge Boasberg’s decision, which was temporarily put on hold
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month by the federal appeals court that sits over him.

The lawyers for the Venezuelans said they wanted to reserve the right
to ask the government for additional discovery information about the
deal the administration had struck with El Salvador, given that the
new document seemed to go beyond “the current record” in the case
in front of Judge Boasberg.

The lawyers said that such additional information was important
because the new material contradicted a sworn declaration filed in May
by Michael G. Kozak, a senior State Department diplomat.

“It was and remains my understanding that the detention and ultimate
disposition of those detained in CECOT and other Salvadoran detention
facilities,” Mr. Kozak said in the declaration, “are matters
within the legal authority of El Salvador in accordance with its
domestic and international legal obligations.”

_ALAN FEUER [[link removed]] covers extremism
and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases
involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former
President Donald J. Trump. _

_Subscribe to the NEW YORK TIMES
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* Deportation
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* Donald Trump
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* Justice Department
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* Federal Courts;
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* due process
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