Civil rights attorneys raise the alarm about 3 NY asylum-seekers currently held in a Texas detention facility

At least three Venezuelan men who were seeking asylum in New York are now being held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in northern Texas and are at risk of being removed from the country, possibly to a notorious detention camp in El Salvador, court documents reveal.

The three immigrants – referred to as F.G.M., H.I.D.R. and O.A.S. in court documents – are Venezuelan men who entered the U.S., applied for asylum and lived in New York. Two of them are represented by attorneys working for the Legal Aid Society and the third is represented by an attorney working for Brooklyn Defender Services. All three are currently detained at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in northern Texas.

Just after midnight on Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a temporary order prohibiting the federal government from deporting any Venezuelan men detained at Bluebonnet.

Deborah Lee, the attorney-in-charge of the Legal Aid Society’s immigration law unit, told City & State that both of her clients have pending asylum claims which have not yet been ruled on by a judge. Brooklyn Defender Services declined to comment on the case. 

According to Lee, both of Legal Aid’s clients were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in New York and had been held in different ICE detention facilities around the country. Neither of them have a criminal conviction, Lee said, and at least one of them was a so-called “collateral arrest” – the term used when ICE doesn’t have a specific warrant to arrest someone but just takes them into custody because they come across them randomly.

Lee said that both of the men represented by Legal Aid have applied for asylum because they fear persecution if they return to Venezuela. She said that they have not yet had the chance to present their cases in immigration court. (Due to the immigration court backlog, it can take years for asylum cases to be heard.) She said that neither has a final order of removal, which would ordinarily mean that they could not legally be removed from the country.

But President Donald Trump has attempted to circumvent immigration law by issuing an executive order allowing him to designate Venezuelan men alleged to be part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, as “alien enemies” who are subject to immediate deportation without any due process.

“Shall be apprehended, restrained, and removed from the United States”

Lee said that both of Legal Aid’s clients were recently transferred to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in northern Texas. Days after arriving at Bluebonnet, one of them, F.G.M., was handed an English-language document and told to sign it.

“He notified us yesterday evening that he was approached at the facility and given a piece of paper that was in English. It was not in Spanish, which is the language that he is able to read and understand. And what he understood from the officer who gave it to him is that it came from the President and that he needed to sign it,” Lee said. “He did not understand what it was. He refused to sign it, but there was this threat that he would still be deported regardless.”

The document was not shared with F.G.M.’s attorneys, but the American Civil Liberties Union – which is also representing Venezuelan men detained at Bluebonnet – obtained a copy and filed a redacted version in federal court. The document is titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act” and states that the immigrant is a member of the Tren de Aragua gang and “has been determined to be an Alien Enemy and…shall be apprehended, restrained, and removed from the United States.” 

According to Lee, F.G.M. has denied that he is a member of Tren de Aragua and said he sought asylum in the U.S. to escape violence from the gang.

“He does have an asylum application, and he actually fears the TdA gang and that was part of his fleeing Venezuela. He not only denies being a TdA member, he fears this gang,” she said.

Lee fears that the men at Bluebonnet – including F.G.M., O.A.S. and H.I.D.R. – will be sent to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, a notorious prison camp in El Salvador known as CECOT. Last month, more than 100 Venezuelan men whom the Trump administration claimed were members of Tren de Aragua were flown from an ICE detention facility in Texas to CECOT. One of the men sent to CECOT last month was Merwil Gutiérrez, a 19-year-old randomly arrested by ICE outside of his Bronx apartment.

Lee said that the treatment of F.G.M., O.A.S. and H.I.D.R. shows the danger of New York City working with federal immigration authorities – and in particular, the recent executive order signed by First Deputy Mayor Randy Mastro that would allow ICE to reestablish a presence on Rikers Island. The New York City Council sued the Adams administration, arguing that the executive order violates the city’s 2014 sanctuary law. On Monday, a state judge temporarily blocked the order from going into effect.

“The beginning part of that executive order talks about TdA and MS-13 as part of the reasoning for inviting ICE back to Rikers,” Lee said. “So I do think that there is a connection between the city’s actions and the consequence of what might happen with that and this ongoing issue with the Alien Enemies Act.”

Mastro’s executive order targets “transnational gangs such as Tren de Aragua and MS-13” and states that ICE will not engage in civil immigration enforcement on Rikers but will instead work with the city to combat “violent criminals and gangs, crimes committed at or facilitated by persons in (Department of Correction) custody, and drug trafficking.” 

Lee fears that ICE agents stationed on Rikers could accuse Venezuelan and El Salvadoran men held in the jails complex of being members of Tren de Aragua or MS-13 and then try to get them removed from the country without any due process.

“This is an absolute disaster waiting to happen, where individuals will be held, waiting for ICE, and whoever else that the federal government decides to call upon, to pick up individuals that they do not want in the United States, pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act,” she said.

Calls for due process

New York City Council Member Alexa Avilés, chair of the Council’s Committee on Immigration, condemned the Trump administration’s attempts to remove New Yorkers like F.G.M., O.A.S. and H.I.D.R. 

“The violence inflicted by these mass deportation policies will not only devastate the affected individuals and families, but also our whole city and our economy,” she said in a statement. “People are wrongfully designated as gang members to justify the president’s political agenda. Everyone has a right to fair trial and our president does not get to pick and choose when our law applies. This dismantling of our justice system in pursuit of racism cannot stand.”

Murad Awawdeh, the president of the New York Immigration Coalition, called on city leaders to stand up for New Yorkers at risk of being sent to CECOT and also called on the state Legislature to pass New York for All, a bill that would codify and expand the state’s sanctuary policies.

“It is unconscionable that Trump is usurping due process – and our justice system entirely – to  disappear people to the CECOT torture camp in El Salvador,” he said in a statement. “The Fifth Amendment guarantees every single person due process, but instead we are seeing New Yorkers ripped from their families without due process let alone any conviction or order of removal.”

Asked about the three men from New York at Bluebonnet, the mayor’s office said that immigrant New Yorkers should not be deported without proper immigration proceedings.

“Mayor Adams has been clear that all New Yorkers – regardless of their documentation status – have the right to due process,” Adams press secretary Kayla Mamelak told City & State. “We do not cooperate with the federal government on civil deportation matters, and therefore have no additional information on these cases.”

Adams has previously brushed off concerns about due process being subverted when advocating for a rollback to a version of sanctuary city policy that made suspicion of criminal activity – but not a conviction or criminal charges – a prerequisite for collaboration with federal immigration authorities to take place. 

Asked on Tuesday if he would reaffirm a commitment to due process, Adams said yes, but he punted a question about whether he would object to someone being sent to CECOT in El Salvador without being charged with a specific crime or given a trial. In his answer, he invoked examples that seemed to apply to more to student protesters than to alleged gang members.

“There is a court system that would determine if someone’s right was violated,” Adams said during his weekly off-topic press conference. “If you’re handing out literature, lifting up Hamas – which is a terrorist organization – if you’re trying to recruit to do so, if you damage property because you want to break into buildings somewhere on the college campus – there are repercussions because of that. And so the court makes that determination.”