The Justice Department has told a federal judge that 252 Venezuelan nationals deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador last March are owed no further U.S. process, arguing that returning them or staging hearings abroad is legally and practically impossible, and signaling it will immediately appeal any injunction ordering otherwise.
The administration’s position arrived in a blunt Monday filing that left little room for compromise. It rejects Judge James Boasberg’s options — bringing the deportees back or holding proceedings overseas — as either unlawful or unworkable. That stance turns this fight into a direct test of executive authority over national security removals.
“If, over defendants’ vehement legal and practical objections, the Court issues an injunction, defendants intend to immediately appeal, and will seek a stay pending appeal from this Court (and, if necessary, from the D.C. Circuit).”
The dispute traces to last March, when the administration used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove 252 Venezuelan nationals to CECOT, a maximum-security facility in El Salvador. Those deportations happened even after an emergency order from Judge Boasberg, and the clash quickly escalated through the courts, landing at the Supreme Court by April. The high court made clear that individuals removed under that statute deserve a meaningful chance to contest removal, and the question since has been how to satisfy that ruling for people already off U.S. soil.
Boasberg’s December order asked the government to either bring the detainees back to the United States or hold hearings abroad that meet due process standards. In its latest filing the DOJ replied that neither path is viable, framing both choices as threats to ongoing foreign policy and safety. The department says the courts cannot demand remedies that would undercut critical diplomatic negotiations or national security operations.
DOJ lawyers warned that holding proceedings overseas would risk “injecting an extremely complicated issue into what is already a delicate situation” and could also risk “negatively affecting U.S. efforts toward stabilization and transition that aim to benefit tens of millions of Venezuelans.” Those are not theoretical concerns when the region is volatile and U.S. interests are on the line. The filing argues that a federal judge in Washington cannot responsibly order the executive to recreate American courtroom conditions in a country where U.S. actions have just altered the security environment.
The department stressed that returning the deportees to U.S. soil would harm what it called “critical” foreign policy negotiations with Venezuela and would bring “profound” national security risks, pointing to alleged gang links among some of the migrants. That reasoning ties directly to events on the ground: U.S. forces recently captured Nicolás Maduro in a raid in Caracas, and his wife was arrested alongside him. Those operations have changed the calculus for safe, feasible judicial remedies abroad.
At the same time, the administration has defended the use of the Alien Enemies Act as a legitimate wartime measure, not an obsolete relic. DOJ attorneys told a 17-judge en banc panel of the Fifth Circuit that the 227-year-old statute was designed for threats like this and remains relevant to modern national security challenges. They cited the U.S. indictment against Maduro and related findings to argue the removals fit squarely within the statute’s purpose.
“These new developments underscore the Maduro Regime’s control over TdA and TdA’s violent invasion or predatory incursion on American soil. As a result, it is even clearer that the President’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was part of a high-level national security mission that exists outside the realm of judicial interference.”
On the other side, civil liberties advocates pressed back hard. ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt told the Fifth Circuit judges that the act should not be read as granting the president “a blank check” for broad war powers. That line of argument frames the dispute as a protection-of-rights issue and challenges the administration’s reading of both history and statute.
“a blank check” for a president to “use his war powers any time he considers it valuable.”
The administration rejects the blank-check charge and insists its actions targeted a specific, documented criminal network tied to a hostile regime. Officials argue that the problem the Alien Enemies Act addresses is as old as the country: hostile foreign agents operating on U.S. soil, and that the statute’s age reflects persistent reality rather than obsolescence. From their perspective, judges should not be allowed to impose impossible procedural demands that would hamstring national security enforcement.
What happens next is procedural and consequential. Judge Boasberg must decide whether to issue the injunction he has been considering, and the DOJ has said it will appeal immediately if he does. That move would push the matter to the D.C. Circuit and likely back to the Supreme Court, which has already stepped into this controversy once.
The core clash goes beyond these 252 cases. It tests whether courts can effectively veto executive decisions in national security deportations by imposing remedial rules that cannot be satisfied after the fact. The administration’s filing framed those remedial demands as unworkable and insisted the judiciary lacks the authority to require either option Boasberg set out.
Lawyers and judges now prepare for a high-stakes sequence of rulings that could reshape how far courts can intrude on national security removals. The administration has made its position unmistakable: it will defend its use of the Alien Enemies Act and will push this case through the appellate system without yielding on the legal or practical points it raised. The next decisions in the courts will determine whether that defense holds.
