Judge orders discovery to see if Trump admin 'violated federal law' and 'due-process rights'
Source: Law & Crime
May 8th, 2025, 4:25 pm
The Justice Department this week continued to insist that the U.S. has no authority over the fates of more than 100 migrants removed to a terrorist prison in El Salvador with minimal, if any, due process under President Donald Trump’s controversial invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, but a federal judge in Washington, D.C., is not taking the administration at its word.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on Thursday initiated the discovery process in a case brought on behalf of several migrants currently being housed in the notorious CECOT — short for Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo — prison to help the court determine whether the U.S. maintains “constructive custody” over them, despite their current location.
Constructive custody, in the context of the federal habeas statute, extends to prisoners who are not in “actual, physical custody” because they are being held by someone else “under or by color of the authority of the United States.” Examples of constructive custody include a petitioner who is free on parole but still subject to parole restraints or where an individual is “imprisoned by a private party at the behest of the U.S. Government.”
The “most relevant” example of constructive custody, according to Boasberg, is a 2004 federal case out of the District of Columbia circuit in which the court held that federal habeas jurisdiction “was possible (indeed, likely) where a U.S. citizen was held abroad in a Saudi Arabian prison at the behest of U.S. authorities.” The instant case, as well as several other high-profile lawsuits, hinges on the custody question and whether those allegedly unlawfully removed to El Salvador can be returned to the U.S. and receive the due process they were denied in mid-March.
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/judge-orders-discovery-to-see-if-trump-admin-violated-federal-law-and-due-process-rights-by-sending-migrants-to-el-salvador-under-alien-enemies-act/
Full headline: Judge orders discovery to see if Trump admin ‘violated federal law’ and ‘due-process rights’ by sending migrants to El Salvador under Alien Enemies Act
Link to ORDER (PDF viewer) - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25933651-govuscourtsdcd2784361160/
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25933651/govuscourtsdcd2784361160.pdf
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