Judge orders US to take steps to return some deported migrants

Detained Venezuelans board a flight to Venezuela as part of a detainee exchange agreement between Venezuela and United States on July 18, 2025 in La Paz, El Salvador.

• Judge orders US to help some deported Venezuelans return
• US must pay for flights and issue travel documents
• Migrants can challenge deportations after reentry into US

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A federal judge has ordered US officials to “facilitate the return” of at least some Venezuelan migrants deported last year as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

US District Judge James Boasberg on Thursday directed the Trump administration to issue travel documents to individuals who are no longer in Venezuela and want to return to the US to continue challenging their original deportations. The US government also must pay the cost of their commercial flights, he ruled.

The migrants will be taken into custody when admitted into the US, the judge noted, but he wrote that this would at least put them in a better position to press their legal claims. Boasberg criticized the administration for failing to offer proposals for how the men could exercise their rights, describing the government’s approach as “essentially” telling the judge “to pound sand.”

“Mindful of the flagrancy of the government’s violations of the deportees’ due-process rights that landed plaintiffs in this situation, the court refuses to let them languish in the solution-less mire defendants propose,” Boasberg wrote.

Spokespeople for the Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The latest order doesn’t cover all of the 137 Venezuelans who are part of the class action contesting Trump’s decision to designate them as members of the Tren de Aragua gang under the rarely-used Alien Enemies Act. The administration invoked the war-time power to swiftly send them to a prison in El Salvador last March. They were later returned to Venezuela and set free.

The judge said class members still in Venezuela can continue to pursue their claims through written submissions. He hasn’t ordered the US to take other steps to bring them back, citing the administration’s foreign affairs concerns following the seizure of President Nicolás Maduro last month.

The case involves a broad challenge to the legality of Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act as well as individual claims by migrants disputing their designation as gang members.

At a hearing earlier in the week, a lawyer for the migrants with the American Civil Liberties Union told Boasberg that it’s been difficult to communicate with the men while they’re abroad. Some of them are in hiding and continue to fear persecution by the Venezuelan government, the lawyer said.

Lee Gelernt, a lead attorney for the Venezuelans with the ACLU, said in a statement that “the court was right to order they be given due process, despite the government’s ongoing refusal to adhere to the Constitution.”

Boasberg wrote in Thursday’s order that it is the government’s obligation “to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means for doing so.”

“Were it otherwise, the government could simply remove people from the United States without providing any process and then, once they were in a foreign country, deny them any right to return for a hearing or opportunity to present their case from abroad,” he wrote.

The case is J.G.G. v. Trump, 25-cv-766, US District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).