The Department of Justice, according to a newly unsealed document, is giving people who get a notice that they are being removed from the country under the Alien Enemies Act “no less than 12 hours” to contest the order.
In a sworn declaration by Carlos Cisneros, an assistant field officer for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the official said immigrants are given “a reasonable amount of time, and no less than 12 hours, including the ability to make a telephone call, to indicate or express an intent to file a habeas petition,” reports ABC News on Friday.
“If the alien does not express any such intention, then ICE may proceed with the removal,” the declaration adds. “If the alien does express an intent to file a habeas petition, the alien is given a reasonable amount of time, and no less than 24 hours, to actually file that petition.”
The statements were unsealed by a federal judge in the Southern District of Texas, who had issued an order temporarily blocking the U.S. government from deporting Venezuelans being held in the El Valle Detention Center in Texas earlier this month.
Last month, the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport two planeloads of Venezuelans to the CECOT mega-prison in El Salvador sparked a legal battle.
The administration argues that the immigrants were members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which it says is a “hybrid criminal state” invading the United States, justifying the use of the 18th-century wartime law.
Cisneros also declared that since people who are subject to the AEA for several days before being deported, “they frequently have much more time to express an intent to file a habeas petition or to actually file such a petition.”
An ICE official acknowledged that many of the men who were deported in March do not have criminal records in the United States, but said the “lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and shows “that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”
The Supreme Court has temporarily stopped the deportation of any Venezuelan being held in Texas under the AEA after an emergency appeal filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on claims that removals were restarting without allowing those who have been detained to receive due process.
Cisneros added that ICE won’t remove anyone with a pending habeas petition, but there could be “fact-specific exceptional cases.”
The notice that is given to immigrants is in English, but read to them in a language they would understand, as ICE officers are accustomed to working with aliens who do not understand English, Cisneros said.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt, however, said 12 hours is not enough time for challenges to be filed, and that the “government cannot plausibly claim that 12 hours is sufficient notice, which could be the reason they tried to keep it from the public and other courts addressing the notice issue, including the U.S. Supreme Court.”
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