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Last Wednesday (March 26), Judge Patricia Millett, a judge in the appeals court in Washington D.C., delivered a stinging rebuke to the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport 238 Venezuelan migrants — allegedly members of the Tren de Aragua gang — to CECOT, El Salvador’s notorious maximum-security “terrorist” prison, where they are all now imprisoned without charge or trial, for at least a year, and perhaps more, at a cost to the US taxpayer of $6 million, even though no evidence was presented by the Trump administration to confirm that they were gang members, and even though, in some cases, compelling testimony from family members would seem to confirm that they had no involvement whatsoever with Tren de Aragua.

At the hearing on March 26, Judge Millett told the government’s main lawyer, Drew Ensign, a Deputy Assistant Attorney General in the Justice Department, that “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here”, in an exchange relating to whether or not, as the Guardian described it, “Venezuelans targeted for removal under the Alien Enemies Act had time to contest the Trump administration’s assertion that they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang before they were put on planes and deported to El Salvador.”

Trump’s disturbing invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798

Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in a “proclamation” on March 15, in what appeared to be a nakedly authoritarian attempt to deport Venezuelans alleged to be members of the gang without making any effort to establish whether or not that was the case.

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In the long and sordid history of Guantánamo — open for 15 years and seven months, and still holding men indefinitely without charge or trial, in defiance of domestic and international norms regarding imprisonment — it’s sometimes easy for people to forget the role played by lawyers in resisting the injustice of the prison, and in publicizing the men’s stories.

For over 12 years now, lawyers have generally been the only people outside of the various branches of the US government — and foreign intelligence services — who have had contact with the prisoners. Lest we forget, the men held at Guantánamo have never been allowed to have family visits, unlike prisoners held on the US mainland — even those convicted of horrendous crimes — and so often the lawyers have been the only people capable of filling the gap left by relatives, and, of course, bringing messages from the men’s families, which has happened time and again as lawyers have visited their clients’ families, and have subsequently been the bearers of their relatives’ communications.

Recently, a new lawyer brought some fresh insight and indignation to a role that many of those involved in must be struggling to keep fresh, after so many years, after the exhaustion of eight years of Obama that, in the end, left the prison open, and with Trump so uninterested in doing anything to bring justice to the remaining 41 prisoners, either by releasing them or putting them on trial in a valid, internationally recognized system, or working towards shutting the prison once and for all. Read the rest of this entry »