NYC judge to block Trump administration from deporting Venezuelans detained in Southern District of New York jails

Molly Crane-Newman, New York Daily News on Apr 9, 2025

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NEW YORK — A federal judge on Wednesday said he would temporarily block the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan nationals detained in jail facilities in the Southern District of New York without affording them due process.

Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein announced his proposed decision after hearing arguments from lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union and the Trump administration.

“I propose to limit the relief to an injunction that requires notice and a hearing,” Hellerstein said. “Because there is danger of imminent removal in the absence of any effective remedy if that occurs — given the state of affairs going on right now — I think an injunction is appropriate.”

The hearing concerned a suit filed late Tuesday on behalf of two Venezuelan men facing imminent deportation to a Salvadoran mega prison without a chance to refute allegations they are gang members.

The Trump administration has sought to deport them “in secret, without due process, to a prison in El Salvador known for dire conditions, torture, and other forms of physical abuse — possibly for life. This has already borne out for over 130 individuals on March 15 who have lost all contact with their attorneys, family, and the world,” the filing read.

The suit was filed in the wake of a ruling by the Supreme Court on Monday vacating the order of a federal judge in D.C. that barred the government from sending Venezuelan migrants to the notorious prison complex in El Salvador, CECOT, from which no known prisoners have ever been released.

The ruling by the nation’s high court empowered the Trump administration to deport Venezuelans determined to be members of the Tren de Aragua street gang under President Donald Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act while reaffirming their right to due process.

Trump, on March 14, invoked the 1798 wartime law in declaring that all Venezuelan citizens over 14 years old who the U.S. determines to be members of Tren de Aragua were liable to be removed from the country as “alien enemies.”

Legal papers filed by lawyers at the ACLU, New York Civil Liberties Union, and The Legal Aid Society said the two men at the center of Tuesday’s suit, referred to by their initials, G.F.F. and J.G.O., had been shackled and brought to an airport the day after Trump’s proclamation and told they would soon be put on a plane to El Salvador, despite the lack of a deportation order from ICE.

Their attorneys quickly filed legal papers challenging their removal, leading them “to be pulled off the planes and, eventually, brought back to the El Valle Detention Facility in Texas,” and then New York, where they were initially arrested, Tuesday’s filings state.

G.F.F. is 21 years old and arrived in the U.S. last May seeking asylum based on fear for his life and persecution by President Nicolás Maduro’s authoritarian regime based on his sexuality, according to his lawyers. J.G.O. is 32 and “deeply fears deportation to Venezuela, where he faces beatings, torture, and imprisonment based on his political activism” against Maduro, court documents say.

Both men are being held at Orange County Jail, which is located within Hellerstein’s jurisdiction in the SDNY and encompasses New York, Bronx, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess and Sullivan counties.

Over 200 migrants were taken to the mega-complex on plane trips the two men in New York narrowly avoided without a chance to defend themselves against allegations they had gang affiliations. CBS reported earlier this week that the majority of them have not been accused of committing any crimes.

At least one of those deported, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was accidentally included in the group, according to admissions in court by the Trump administration, which has cited an “administrative error” and is still pushing back on court orders to bring back the young father who was based in Maryland.

Tuesday’s suit challenges the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, which it notes had only been invoked during war and applied to warlike actions.

“(It) cannot be used here against nationals of a country — Venezuela — with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” the suit reads.

On Wednesday, Hellerstein, whose ruling applies to about a dozen detainees in New York, declined to weigh in on whether the government adequately invoked the wartime law.

“This is an age of disproportionate war,” the judge said.

“We have to deal with al-Shabab in Africa, al-Qaida in Iraq. It’s the same thing that’s going on between the government of Israel and the Hamas and Hezbollah. These are not governments, these are terrorist organizations, and there may be an argument that the Alien Enemies Act applied to such a thing, if god forbid, we were endangered by that. I don’t want to go further than I have to go.”

The parties are due back in court on April 22.

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