The Trump administration will confront a federal judge on Monday who is poised to press government attorneys on whether and how it can provide due process to more than 100 illegal Venezuelan immigrants deported under an 18th-century wartime law and later transferred beyond U.S. custody.
Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia is scheduled to hold a 10 a.m. ET hearing in J.G.G. v. Trump, a lawsuit challenging President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan nationals accused of gang ties.
The case centers on 137 Venezuelan men who were unlawfully in the United States and flown overnight on March 15 to El Salvador’s terrorism confinement center, CECOT, without advance notice or court hearings. The men were later transferred from El Salvador to Venezuela as part of a July prisoner swap involving more than 200 migrants.
In a December 2025 ruling, Boasberg found the removals violated due process and ordered the administration to either facilitate the men’s return to the U.S. or provide constitutionally adequate hearings abroad. He said the migrants were expelled “with virtually no notice and no opportunity to contest the bases of their removal.”
The hearing will focus on whether the administration can comply with that order, a question the Justice Department now says has no workable answer.
In a Feb. 2 filing, DOJ lawyers flatly rejected all remedies proposed by the court, arguing that remote habeas hearings from Venezuela or third countries are “legally and practically impossible” because the men are no longer in U.S. custody and federal courts therefore lack jurisdiction over new habeas petitions.
The filing argues that custody is a nonwaivable jurisdictional requirement and that remote court proceedings would raise insurmountable problems, including the inability to verify identities, enforce perjury laws, or protect classified information. DOJ attorneys also warned that conducting U.S. judicial proceedings abroad, even at a U.S. Embassy or Consulate, would infringe on foreign sovereignty without explicit consent.
The administration also rejected proposals to facilitate the men’s return to the U.S. for hearings, including issuing boarding letters or granting parole at ports of entry. DOJ said any effort to retrieve the men would require delicate diplomacy with Venezuela’s new leadership and risk undermining broader U.S. foreign policy goals.
Those diplomatic concerns were detailed in a sworn declaration submitted last month by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who said the situation has grown more volatile following the Jan. 3 capture of former Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and his wife by U.S. forces and their transfer to Manhattan to face federal drug-trafficking charges.
Rubio said at the time the Maduro arrest triggered a fragile and rapidly evolving transition in Caracas and warned that injecting the fate of the deported men into early negotiations with Venezuela’s interim leader, Delcy Rodriguez, could cause “material damage” to U.S. interests. He also cited security concerns, including the risk of interference by “anti-American elements” if hearings were conducted remotely.
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DOJ lawyers further argued that the men have been separately designated as members of a foreign terrorist organization, a determination they say independently bars their admission into the U.S. under federal law.
The plaintiffs are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, which argues that the government cannot avoid due process obligations by merely transferring detainees out of U.S. custody. Boasberg has indicated that the case is not moot despite the men’s return to Venezuela.