Multiple migrants on contested flights carrying Venezuelans the Trump administration deported to El Salvador said that they were returned to the United States because Salvadorean authorities would not accept them, according to new court filings. To carry out the deportations, President Donald Trump invoked a 18th century wartime law that is now at the center of a high-takes legal battle.
One migrant, a Venezuelan woman, said that she and seven other women were flown back to the US after the plane landed in El Salvador, claiming she was told that “the President of El Salvador would not accept women.”
A second migrant, a Nicaraguan, was also one of the flights on March 15 and then returned back to the United States. He said he overhead an Salvadorean official telling Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) authorities that El Salvador “would not detain someone from another Central American country because of the conflict it would cause.”
The declarations were submitted to Judge James Boasberg, who is reviewing whether the Trump administration violated his March 15 court order to return any flights carrying Venezuelans who were deported under Trump’s proclamation of the Alien Enemies Act back to the United States.
More context: Two of those flights had taken off at the time Boasberg issued is oral order, and the administration has suggested it would not have been feasible to turn around the plane to return the migrants, citing “serious national security, safety, regulatory, and logistical problems” with the judge’s directive.
The migrants’ lawyers said the new declarations “refute” the claims that Boasberg’s order was logistical infeasible.
The Venezuelan woman’s declaration said that, within a “couple of minutes” that her plane had taken off from Laredo, Texas, she overheard two government officials discussing the March 15 court order. One official said, according to her retelling, “there is an order saying we can’t take off but we already have.”
