On Friday, Omar Cárdenas Martínez called a relative from the Bluebonnet detention center in Texas to say that he had just been given a notice. Cárdenas had arrived there earlier this week, after being transferred from another US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility, Prairieland, about three hours away in Alvarado. The document stated that Cárdenas was going to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely invoked law from 1798 that the Trump administration has been using to deprive Venezuelans it accuses of gang membership of due process.
Cárdenas told Jaime, a pseudonym for the relative, who lives in the United States and fears potential retaliation, that he believed he was going to be removed from the country on Friday. According to Jaime, who broke down in despair during parts of the call with Mother Jones, Cárdenas said that he could see bags that held detainees’ personal belongings.
On Friday afternoon, the American Civil Liberties Union reported that Venezuelans held at Bluebonnet were being loaded onto buses, potentially in preparation for removal from the country. The ACLU filed an emergency motion in the US District Court for the District of Columbia asking Judge James Boasberg—who first tried to stop the March 15 flights to El Salvador and has found probable cause to hold the Trump administration in contempt for violating his orders—to block imminent removals under the Alien Enemies Act.
Boasberg quickly scheduled a hearing for Friday evening to gather information about the potential removals and assess whether he had legal authority to block future flights. Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign said at the hearing that no removal flights were scheduled for Friday, and that none were planned for Saturday. But he did not contest that Venezuelans were being given notice in Texas that they were slated for removal under the Alien Enemies Act as alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Ensign also said the administration reserved the right to remove Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act on Saturday, even if flights are not currently scheduled.
The judge seemed doubtful that the notice being provided by the Trump administration to the Venezuelans complied with the Supreme Court’s mandate that people facing Alien Enemies Act–based deportation be given a chance to adequately contest their designations as members of Tren de Aragua. But Boasberg was also skeptical of his own legal authority to block any flights, given that the Supreme Court has said that removals should be challenged before federal courts in the districts where people are detained, and because the matter is already before another federal judge in Texas. As a result, Boasberg ultimately did not grant the ACLU’s request to temporarily halt deportations from Texas.
It is not clear where Cárdenas and other Venezuelans will be sent if removed. Thus far, the Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act to disappear more than 100 Venezuelans into one of the worst prisons in the world, El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT. When Mother Jones spoke with Jaime on Friday morning, that possibility was almost too awful to contemplate.
“He’s afraid of being sent back to his own country,” Jaime said of Cárdenas, who has a pending immigration case in the United States. “Imagine how scared he would be to be sent to El Salvador.”
“He’s afraid of being sent back to his own country. Imagine how scared he would be to be sent to El Salvador.”
The ACLU has separately filed an emergency legal motion in Texas to try to block the summary removal of Venezuelans now at the Bluebonnet detention center, located west of Dallas in the small city of Anson, under the Alien Enemies Act. It is uncertain whether that effort will succeed, despite the Supreme Court’s recent ruling that they must be given a “reasonable” amount of time to file a legal challenge.
In an additional 28-page filing with the Supreme Court on Friday, the ACLU sought to stop the removals of “dozens or hundreds” of detainees in the Northern District of Texas, arguing the government hasn’t provided a “realistic opportunity” for them to fight their impending deportation. “Removal without sufficient notice and time to seek habeas relief,” the brief states, would be a clear violation of the justices’ order.
Michelle Brané, a former Department of Homeland Security official in charge of the Biden administration’s family reunification task force and the executive director of Together and Free, a nonprofit group that supports asylum seekers, told Mother Jones that her organization has heard from two families that Venezuelans at Bluebonnet are facing potentially imminent removal under the Alien Enemies Act. The New York Times, citing two people with knowledge of the situation, reported that more than 50 Venezuelans were scheduled to be removed from the country.
“The real issue here is that the administration is wrongly using the [Alien Enemies Act] to remove people into a black hole without any process,” Brané said. “People disappear and there is no way to know who has been sent or who will be next. We know they have already made mistakes. It endangers everyone in the United States.”
According to court documents and interviews, Cárdenas appears to be one of many Venezuelans at imminent risk of removal under the act. As with the previous group of deportees—many of whom were sent to El Salvador in apparent violation of Boasberg’s court order last month—the men are being accused by the Trump administration of membership in the criminal organization Tren de Aragua, which the US government claims has invaded the country. It is using the invasion claim to invoke the Alien Enemies Act and summarily remove Venezuelans without allowing them to go before an immigration judge.
In a court hearing earlier this month concerning potential removals under the Alien Enemies Act, a Justice Department attorney declined to commit to providing Venezuelans at least 24 hours to dispute their removal. The notice now being provided to the Venezuelans at Bluebonnet does not provide any information about how to contest their removal—it merely states, “If you desire to make a phone call, you will be permitted to do so.” (The ACLU has said it is only aware of the notice being provided in English, although Ensign said at the Friday hearing that it has also been provided in Spanish.)
One of the two plaintiffs in the ACLU case was moved from a county jail in Minnesota to Bluebonnet on April 14. The man came to the United States in 2023, fleeing political persecution in Venezuela for protesting the government of Nicolás Maduro. He has a pending application for asylum and other forms of reprieve from deportation, such as withholding of removal and protection under the Convention Against Torture, with a hearing scheduled later this month. The petition states that ICE detained the man in March while on his way to work, and that he was targeted because of “tattoos and associates that indicated membership in the Tren de Aragua gang.” His tattoos include one of a clock with the date and time of his son’s birth, as well as one of the Virgin Mary and a cross.
His tattoos include a clock with the date and time of his son’s birth, as well as one of the Virgin Mary and a cross.
On Thursday night, Brané spoke to a relative of another man, Luis Yoender Mercado. The relative said she had talked to Mercado that afternoon and that he was very worried about potentially being sent to El Salvador. Brané said Mercado has an immigration hearing scheduled for April 23, and added that family members are in complete panic about the possibility of their loved ones being removed from the United States while their cases are still pending.
In response to questions from Mother Jones, DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin wrote in an email, “We are not going to reveal the details of counter terrorism operations, but we are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling.”
The ACLU has said in legal filings that in recent days the government has transferred Venezuelans from detention centers across the country—including Minnesota, California, and Louisiana—to the Bluebonnet facility. Jaime said his relative, Cárdenas, arrived there around Wednesday and was initially forced to sleep on the floor. That mirrors how Venezuelans were concentrated at another Texas facility, the El Valle detention center, before being sent to El Salvador last month.
In a declaration, attorney Karene Brown of the Legal Aid Society said her client called from Bluebonnet on Thursday evening to say ICE had handed him a notice in English alleging he was a member of Tren de Aragua. The client, who Brown said only speaks Spanish and doesn’t have a final order of removal from an immigration judge, declined to sign. ICE then told the man the papers “were coming from the President, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it.” According to another court filing, immigration attorneys and family members of detainees at Bluebonnet have reported that “forms are being passed out widely to the dozens of Venezuelan men who have been brought there over the past few days.”
On Thursday, a Trump-appointed judge in the Northern District of Texas, James Wesley Hendrix, denied the ACLU’s initial request for a temporary restraining order, finding that the detainees at Bluebonnet were not at “imminent risk of summary removal” because the government had assured the court that they would not deport the two plaintiffs “pending resolution of their habeas petition” and that they would inform the court of any changes. The ACLU filed another emergency request after hearing that Venezuelans were being given documents designating them Tren de Aragua members. It has now elevated that request to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In his order, Hendrix cited a 5-4 Supreme Court decision earlier this month that lifted a district court’s temporary restraining order, which had blocked the Trump administration from removing Venezuelans via the Alien Enemies Act. The Supreme Court’s majority ruled that plaintiffs should have brought challenges in the jurisdiction where they were being detained; as a result, habeas petitions have since been filed across the country.
The justices also reaffirmed that those subject to deportation based on the wartime law should be given appropriate and timely notice and the opportunity to challenge their removal and their designation as members of Tren de Aragua. In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the government’s failure to allow detainees to seek relief would be “in direct contravention of an edict by the United States Supreme Court.”
As Mother Jones has reported, many of the men deported to El Salvador last month were sent based on flimsy evidence and unsubstantiated claims that their tattoos indicated gang affiliation. One of those men was Neri Alvarado Borges, a 25-year-old whose most prominent tattoo is an autism awareness ribbon on his leg, in honor of his teenage brother, who has autism.
DHS has repeatedly refused to provide evidence to support allegations of gang membership. In response to a detailed request for comment from Mother Jones earlier this month, a senior DHS official said, “We aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one.”
“That would be insane,” the DHS official said.
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder and CEO of Immigrant Defenders Law Center (ImmDef), said that from what she has heard, the removals seem imminent. Toczylowski, whose organization represents Andry José Hernández Romero, the makeup artist sent to El Salvador on March 15, said that the group, much like last month, is monitoring closely to see if any removal flights take off from Texas to the Central American country.
“The Trump administration appears afraid to give people due process,” she told Mother Jones, “because they know that if given a day in court to show how flimsy the evidence that they are using to send people to a prison in El Salvador is, they would certainly be defeated in those proceedings.”
Toczylowski also said ImmDef has tried, but not been able, to locate several of their other young Venezuelan clients who had been transferred to other states from California. As of this morning, they no longer appeared to be held in the same facilities. When the group called the Bluebonnet detention center, Toczylowski said, they were told the clients hadn’t been sent there.
“For us, having a Venezuelan client who we can’t confirm has been either removed to Venezuela or can’t confirm what facility they’re in,” she said, “obviously, we are concerned that they’re potentially being staged for removal under the Alien Enemies Act.”
ImmDef is also representing as many as seven Venezuelans currently detained and held incommunicado at CECOT. Toczylowski fears that if the detainees at Bluebonnet join the hundreds of others in the mega-prison in El Salvador, attorneys like her will have few options as they attempt to fight for their clients’ safety and legal rights. Caught in a special kind of trap, at least one of ImmDef’s clients has had their case terminated in absentia by a US immigration judge because they had been sent to El Salvador and couldn’t appear in court for their hearing.
“We know how incredibly complicated and legally tenuous their situation becomes once they’re sitting in a prison in a foreign country,” Toczylowski said.
Mother Jones first spoke to Jaime shortly after Cárdenas was arrested by ICE in Texas on March 20. At the time, ICE had just shared Cárdenas’ photo on Facebook and Instagram in posts that accused him of being a member of Tren de Aragua.
In a video interview earlier this month, Jaime said that Cárdenas called him in desperation as he was being detained in March. He told Jaime that the agents taking him into custody had a photo of him and a document that accused him of being a member of a criminal organization.
“Why are they accusing you of that?” the relative recalled asking Cárdenas at the time.
“They say it’s because of the tattoos I have,” Cárdenas replied, according to his relative.
Though Cárdenas now has a lawyer working on his case, that may not matter if he is removed under the Alien Enemies Act and deprived of his due process rights. Mother Jones has reviewed some of the documents that could be used to demonstrate that—as Jaime insists—he is not a member of Tren de Aragua. They include a form showing that he has no criminal record in Venezuela, annotated photos of his tattoos that explain why they are not related to any criminal organization, and records demonstrating that he was studying business administration at university before fleeing Venezuela.
Cárdenas’ aunt Belkis Martínez, who lives in Venezuela, vouched for his character during the video call. “I’ve known him since he was in his mother’s womb,” she said. “I saw him grow up as a child, a teenager, a young man. Omar has always been a very calm, respectful, hardworking, and studious young man.”
“He had to leave the way he did because of the political situation in this country. It was dangerous for him to stay. That’s how he ended up in the United States,” she added. “And from the moment he arrived, he’s used the proper legal channels.”
She and Jaime explained that he entered the country in 2023 after making an appointment through the CBP One app, which the Biden Administration used to encourage migrants to come to an official port of entry. He applied for Temporary Protected Status and eventually received a work permit and Social Security card. Jaime said he was working at an H-E-B supermarket at the time of his arrest.
“He’s a very hard-working guy. Very noble. Very loved,” Jaime stressed on Friday. “He hasn’t done anything at all. He is not a criminal, as he is being portrayed. He is completely and utterly innocent.”
Later on Friday, Jaime received another call from his relative. Cárdenas said he was being moved again. This time, he had no idea where.
