BOSTON — A federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Wednesday to ensure migrants held at Guantanamo Bay are given a chance to raise any concerns about their safety before being deported to El Salvador or countries other than their places of origin.
U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy in Boston issued the order after immigrant rights advocates argued the administration had violated a court order he issued by flying four Venezuelans held at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to El Salvador on a flight conducted by the U.S. 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 that they fear being persecuted or tortured in those third countries.
President Donald Trump’s administration argued it had not violated the judge’s order as it only applied to the Homeland Security Department, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, not the Defense Department.
The U.S. Department of Justice said three of the four migrants were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and said the Department of Defense removed them to El Salvador without the knowledge or direction of the Homeland Security Department.
At the president’s direction, the administration has been housing some detained migrants at Guantanamo Bay, a base better known for holding foreign terrorism suspects following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.
Murphy, an appointee of Trump’s Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, said he was not at this time assessing whether the deportations of the four Venezuelans to El Salvador were not at the Homeland Security Department’s behest and was instead modifying his order “in an abundance of caution.”
He said going forward, before Homeland Security deports or allows another agency to deport a migrant held at the base to countries other than their own, it must comply with the injunction he issued, providing them due-process guarantees.
Murphy also barred Homeland Security from ceding custody or control of a migrant in any manner that prevents that individual from receiving due process in accordance with his preliminary injunction.
Trina Realmuto, a lawyer for migrants at the National Immigration Litigation Alliance pursuing the case before Murphy, called his decision “a positive step toward preventing DHS from using Guantanamo Bay and the Department of Defense to carry out third-country deportations without due process.”
The Departments of Justice and Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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 Tren de Aragua 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.
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