Saturday Rewind: 'Remedy the wrong'

Judge Boasberg gave 137 men a chance to return to the U.S. nearly a year after their expulsion. The ACLU explains what happens next.

A little less than a year later, hundreds of men spirited away from the United States to one of the most dangerous prisons in the Western Hemisphere may have a chance for redress.

In a long-awaited reckoning, Chief U.S. District Judge James ‘Jeb’ Boasberg ordered the government to facilitate the return of 137 men summarily expelled without notice or a hearing in March 2025. The Venezuelan immigrants may either return to the United States or pursue habeas claims from abroad.

In a video interview, the American Civil Liberties Union's Lee Gelernt explains what the ruling means for his clients.

“This is an enormously significant ruling and comes 334 days after the government, as you pointed out, spirited these people out in the middle of the night in defiance of a court order, sent them to one of the most brutal prisons in the world — the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador — where they were abused and tortured without due process,” said Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project.

Gelernt said it was unclear how many of the 137 people subject to the order will be able to return, and many who chose that option might eventually be detained and deported.

But Boasberg found they must be afforded that opportunity.

“In other words, it is up to the government to remedy the wrong that it perpetrated here and to provide a means to doing so,” Boasberg wrote. “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.”

Watch my full interview with the lead attorney in the J.G.G. v. Trump litigation on the All Rise News playlist for Legal AF.

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