Lawyers hired by the Venezuelan government have filed a legal action in El Salvador aimed at freeing 238 Venezuelans deported by the United States who are being held in a Salvadoran maximum-security prison.
Jaime Ortega, who says he represents 30 of the imprisoned Venezuelans, said on Monday they filed the habeas corpus petition with the Supreme Court's Constitutional Chamber. He said that by extension, they requested that it be applied to all Venezuelans detained in El Salvador.
The manoeuvre essentially compels the government to prove someone's detention was justified.
The Salvadoran government has been silent about the status of the Venezuelan prisoners since the US government sent them more than a week ago, despite a US federal judge's verbal order to turn the planes around.
The Trump administration is using an 18th-century wartime law to justify sending the Venezuelans, who it says were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which the administration declared an invading force.
"We represent at this moment 30 Venezuelans who have given us the power to act, but by extension, we are asking for habeas corpus for the rest of the Venezuelan citizens who are detained in our country," Ortega said.
Salvador Rios, another lawyer with the firm, said they were contracted by the Venezuelan government and the Families of Immigrants Committee in Venezuela.
He said the Venezuelans they represent are not members of the Tren de Aragua and had migrated from their country and "don't have any criminal record."
In February, El Salvador President Nayib Bukele offered to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to imprison US deportees or even US citizens serving prison sentences. The US is paying El Salvador to hold them for what both governments say is a cost savings.
But lawyers in both countries have questioned the legal justification for sending migrants who have not been convicted or, in many cases, even charged with a crime to prison in a foreign country.
TRT Global - The deportation was suspended last month when Trump claimed Venezuela had not lived up to a deal to quickly receive deported migrants.
US treated Nazis better
In the US, a federal judge said the US treated alleged Nazis during World War II better than the Trump administration treated hundreds of Venezuelan migrants last week.
Judge Patricia Millett, with the US Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, heard arguments over President Donald Trump's use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) last week to deport more than 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua.
She explained in the courtroom that all of them were deported to El Salvador without due process.
"There were planeloads of people. There were no procedures in place to notify people," said Millett. "Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act."
