New York and Texas Rulings Curb Deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador

Two federal judges issued separate orders on Wednesday placing road blocks in the Trump administration’s continuing efforts to use a powerful wartime statute to deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members to El Salvador.

The twin rulings, in New York and Texas, were in direct response to a Supreme Court decision handed down on Monday that overturned a similar order issued last month by a federal judge in Washington. They suggest that even though President Trump declared victory when the justices weighed in on the matter, the battle over using the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport migrants is certain to persist.

In its decision, the Supreme Court found that migrants subject to deportation under the act need to be given notice before being removed from the country so that they can challenge the process in court. But those challenges, the justices said, are required to be made in the places where the migrants are being held.

On Tuesday, two Venezuelans being held in a detention center in the town of Goshen, in Orange County, N.Y., asked Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein to shield them from being deported.

Judge Hellerstein, at a hearing on Wednesday in Federal District Court in Manhattan, issued a narrow decision in their case. He said that any Venezuelan migrants in his judicial district, the Southern District of New York, subject to deportation under the statute have to be given the opportunity to have a hearing before they are removed from the country.

“It seems to me that people need to be protected,” Judge Hellerstein said.

In a broader decision handed down in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. said that the administration cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to remove any Venezuelans being held at the El Valle Detention Center, in Raymondville, near the southern border, until at least April 23.

All of the Venezuelans who brought claims in New York and Texas had been protected from deportation under the now-defunct order issued in Washington on March 15. After the Supreme Court’s ruling on Monday, they simply refiled their cases to comply with the justices’ new legal framework.

Mr. Trump’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants have set off one of the most contentious legal battles of his second term. It began last month, after the president invoked the act, which has been used only three times since it was passed in 1798, to authorize the deportation of people he claims were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang.

The American Civil Liberties Union immediately challenged Mr. Trump’s use of the act in court filings to Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington, even as the administration rushed more than 100 Venezuelan migrants on to planes to El Salvador. Once there, the migrants were put in a megaprison called CECOT, known for its brutal conditions.

Lawyers for the A.C.L.U. have said the government unlawfully used the act, which is supposed to be invoked only in times of declared war or during an “invasion” by a foreign nation or government.

In its ruling this week, the Supreme Court did not weigh in on the question of whether Mr. Trump has complied with such provisions of the law. But a federal appeals court in Washington ruled last month that at this early stage, it appeared unlikely that the Alien Enemies Act could be applied in the way Mr. Trump was trying to use it.

Judge Boasberg has also expressed skepticism about the White House’s use of the statute, saying that he was concerned that the migrants who fell subject to it had no way to contest whether they were gang members in the first place.

One of the men identified in the Texas filing as J.A.V. is a 32-year-old Venezuelan who was taken into custody by federal immigration agents during an asylum interview in February, largely because of his tattoos, court papers say. He has denied being a member of Tren de Aragua.

J.A.V.’s lawyers claim he is H.I.V.-positive and fears deportation to El Salvador “on account of his sexual orientation.” Like the other two men identified in the filings, he was almost deported on the planes that left Texas on March 15, but was spared at the last minute by Judge Boasberg’s initial order.

Both of the other men — known in the filings as J.G.G. and W.G.H. — have also denied belonging to Tren de Aragua.

The first of the men who brought suit in New York is a 21-year-old who fled Venezuela after having been threatened by members of Tren de Aragua because of his sexual orientation, the A.C.L.U. said in a filing.

The second is a 32-year-old who applied for asylum after having protested the actions of the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, and later fled the country, fearing that he would be imprisoned, tortured and killed for his activism.