The 2 planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members who had been deported to El Salvador final week included eight feminine detainees who had been later returned to the U.S., in accordance with sworn declarations filed Monday.
A Venezuelan lady recognized as S.Z.F.R. described in a sworn declaration how she was transferred to a detention heart in El Paso, Texas, final week earlier than being despatched to El Salvador final Saturday together with seven different Venezuelan ladies.
“I requested the place we had been going and we had been informed that we had been going to Venezuela,” the Venezuelan lady stated within the submitting. “A number of different folks on the airplane informed me they had been in immigration proceedings and awaiting courtroom hearings in immigration courtroom.”
The lady stated all of the detainees, together with the ladies, had been “arm and leg shackled” the complete time, together with once they landed in a foreign country for a number of hours whereas the airplane refueled.
In keeping with the lady, officers requested the detained males to signal “a doc they did not need to.”
“The federal government officers had been pushing them to signal the paperwork and threatening them,” the lady stated. “I heard them discussing the paperwork and so they had been concerning the males admitting they had been members of TdA” or Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang whose felony exercise prompted President Donald Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport its members with little-to-no due course of.
Throughout a hearing Monday earlier than the U.S. Court docket of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, an lawyer for the ACLU stated the group plans to file the doc that migrant detainees signed earlier than they had been despatched to El Salvador.
Alleged members of the Venezuelan felony group Tren de Aragua who had been deported by the U.S. authorities, are detained on the Terrorism Confinement Middle in Tecoluca, El Salvador in a photograph obtained Mar. 16, 2025.
Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia by way of Reuters
“We’ll put into the district courtroom the piece of paper that people are getting that particularly says, ‘You are not entitled to overview,'” Lee Gelernt, the lawyer for the ACLU, stated.
Officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement didn’t reply to a request for remark from ABC Information.
U.S. District Choose James Boasberg issued a restraining order final Saturday to briefly block such deportations, main Justice Division attorneys to problem his order earlier than the U.S. Court docket of Appeals.
An official with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement final week acknowledged in a sworn declaration that “many” of the noncitizens deported final week underneath the Alien Enemies Act didn’t have felony data in america. Administration officers haven’t been clear concerning the proof they’ve that reveals the detainees are gang members.
In her declaration filed Monday, S.Z.F.R. stated that after they landed in El Salvador, the ladies remained on the airplane after the boys received off.
“The remaining ladies requested, ‘What occurs to us?'” the lady stated within the declaration. “I used to be informed that the president of El Salvador wouldn’t settle for ladies. I used to be additionally informed that we had been going again to detention within the U.S.”
In keeping with S.Z.F.R., she was returned to the U.S. in the course of the night time.
In a separate sworn declaration, a Nicaraguan migrant stated he was additionally returned to the U.S. after being on one of many planes that landed in El Salvador.
“I overheard a Salvadoran official inform an ICE officer that the Salvadoran authorities wouldn’t detain somebody from one other Central American nation due to the battle it could trigger,” the Nicaraguan man stated within the declaration.
“I additionally heard him say that they might not obtain the females as a result of the jail was not for females and females weren’t talked about within the settlement,” he stated.
The Nicaraguan migrant, who was not named, stated he was forcibly faraway from the airplane when it landed in El Salvador and questioned about his citizenship.
“Everybody was scared, and a few folks needed to forcibly be faraway from the airplane,” he stated.
