By Nate Raymond
BOSTON (Reuters) – A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Monday to turn over the names of any migrants flown recently from the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay to El Salvador so he could determine whether they were deported in violation of a court order he issued.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy said at a hearing in Boston that the information was necessary to assess the administration’s claims that flying four Venezuelans held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to El Salvador did not flout Murphy’s order from March because the flight was conducted by the Department of Defense.
Murphy in late March had issued a temporary restraining order, which he later extended into an injunction, restricting the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to rapidly deport migrants to countries other than their own without allowing them to first raise concerns about their safety or potential torture.
U.S. Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn said at Monday’s hearing that because the Homeland Security Department did not “direct” the Defense Department to deport the four individuals, three of whom belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, the administration had not violated the judge’s orders.
The hearing marked the latest instance of a judge questioning the administration’s compliance, or lack thereof, with court rulings limiting its aggressive deportation practices as part of the Republican president’s immigration crackdown.
Murphy questioned how the Defense Department could conduct the flights without working in concert with Homeland Security, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement and is tasked with overseeing detained migrants and executing their deportations.
“What authority would DOD have to effectuate that deportation?” Murphy asked.
Guynn responded he could not immediately address that question, saying that “it’s a new day, and there have been lots of changes.” He said he would need to submit further briefing on the issue.
In separate cases, judges have said the administration violated an order to return hundreds of Venezuelans swiftly deported to El Salvador under a wartime law, and that the administration had not acted upon an order to facilitate the return of a migrant wrongly deported to El Salvador.
Many Venezuelan migrants accused by the administration of belonging to the gang are now being held at El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, under an agreement in which the U.S. is paying President Nayib Bukele’s government $6 million.
Trina Realmuto, a lawyer at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance representing a group of migrants pursuing the case before Murphy, in court on Monday called the claim that Homeland Security is not directing the Defense Department’s flights from Guantanamo “deeply troubling” and “frivolous.”
“Defendants cannot blatantly disregard the court’s order simply by having another government, department, or agency complete the final step,” she said.
Many migrants subject to final orders of removal have been granted protections against returning to their home countries where their lives or freedom would be threatened or where they faced a risk of torture.
Realmuto urged Murphy to modify his injunction to bar the removal of such migrants from Guantanamo, something the judge said he was inclined to do but needed to assess if he could. He said he would rule by Thursday.
In the meantime, he directed the administration in two weeks to provide Realmuto’s team information on the names of people flown from Guantanamo to El Salvador who may be subject to his orders in the lawsuit.
(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston, Editing by Alexia Garamfalvi and Bill Berkrot)
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