A federal judge in Colorado Tuesday extended her ban on the Trump administration’s use of an 18th-century law to deport Venezuelan immigrants from the state and ruled federal authorities must give illegal immigrants 21 days’ notice before removals.
U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, who heard arguments Monday from the U.S. Department of Justice and immigration rights groups, decided to extend her temporary restraining order to May 6 and said she might continue it even longer. Her order temporarily prevents the government from invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport immigrants to a prison in El Salvador, various media outlets reported.
Sweeney’s written ruling Tuesday included a requirement that the immigrants be given notice in a language that they understand that they have the right to an attorney.
Last week Sweeney temporarily blocked deportations after a request by the American Civil Liberties Union, representing two Venezuelan men being held in Aurora, Colorado, who feared they would be falsely accused of belonging to the gang Tren de Aragua. The ACLU has said there are about 100 people at the Aurora U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement center who are at risk of being sent to the CECOT prison in El Salvador.
During court arguments Monday in Denver, the DOJ told Sweeney that anyone subject to deportation under the act would be given 24 hours to challenge their deportation in court, CBS News Colorado reported.
But attorneys with the ACLU and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network, who are suing the Trump administration to challenge the deportations and say 11 people have been deported from Colorado to El Salvador, told the judge 24 hours isn’t enough time.
It isn’t enough time for people who likely don’t speak English, don’t have a lawyer, don’t have access to a phone and may not have a high level of education, Tim Macdonald, legal director of the ACLU of Colorado, told CBS News.
The U.S. Supreme Court Saturday temporarily blocked the deportations of any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Earlier, the court ruled the Trump administration may use the 18th-century law, but must grant court hearings for the illegal immigrants before they’re deported.
President Donald Trump said it isn’t possible to have trials for every person targeted for deportation.
“We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” Trump wrote Monday on his social media platform, Truth Social. “We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country.”
