In the Abrego Garcia case, the United States Supreme Court held (5 to 4), in part, that anyone the Trump administration seeks to deport under the Alien Enemies Act as an alleged member of the MS-13 or the Tren de Aragua gangs is entitled to constitutional due process, including a federal court hearing brought by a habeas corpus petition.
Now, we have had one of the first due process challenges brought to the Trump Administration’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, and it will surprise no one that a federal judge in Texas has excoriated the government for a complete lack of an evidentiary basis for the underlying charge that the two petitioners were members of Tren de Aragua. (The 37 page order and decision can be found here, and it merits a full read. The facts recited below are taken from the order and decision.)
The case concerns a married couple, Julio Cesar Sanchez Puentes and Luddis Norella Sanchez Garcia, who came to the U.S. in 2022 from Venezuela and were eventually granted protection under the Temporary Protected Status (“TPS”) program for certain Venezuelan nationals. On April 1, 2025, Petitioners were notified by the Trump Administration that their TPA protected status had been withdrawn because they were associated with Tren de Aragua,” a “Foreign Terrorist Organization,” and they were subsequently arrested and imprisoned. Initially, the federal judge held that their imprisonment was illegal under the statute governing the TPS program.
At the hearing, the charges based against Ms. Sanchez Garcia were principally based on her supposed “confession” to arresting officers that she was once married to a member of Tren de Argua, that she separated from him about ten years ago, and that her ex-husband was eventually killed by the Venezuelan government as a result of his gang membership. Plus, the government argued, it had secret “intelligence” evidence supporting her membership (which it would not share with the court). As to Mr. Sanchez Puentes, the government’s case — amazingly -- consisted of: “well, he chose to marry and have kids with Ms. Sanchez Garcia. So, he must be Tren de Aragua too.”
The presiding federal judge David Briones was livid at the Trump Administration for the lack of any evidence to support the underlying charge of an association with Tren de Argua. As to Mr. Sanchez Puentes, Judge Briones wrote (pp. 32-33): “This Court takes clear offense to [the Government] wasting judicial resources to admit to the Court that it has no evidence.” And rejecting the “guilt by marriage association” theory, the Judge denied the Government an opportunity to even make a closing argument against Mr. Sanchez Puentes.
As to Ms. Sanchez Garcia’s guilt by a deceased ex-husband, and undisclosed “secret evidence,” Judge Briones was similarly scathing (pp. 24-30). A sample excerpt:
Respondents and the Government based the entirety of their case on multiple levels of hearsay, hidden within declarations of declarants who have no personal knowledge about the facts they are attesting to. These declarants are not the ones who interviewed Petitioner Sanchez Garcia, and they are not the ones who captured her allegedly incriminating statement on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C., and are not the ones who collected “intelligence” and generated reports that contain “highly reliable and verified” information. Further these declarants are not the ones who conducted interviews of law enforcement informants who allegedly identified Petitioner Sanchez Garcia as a Member of TdA. What is astonishing is that these declarants cannot even so much identify what government official did receive the alleged information directly. Respondents ask this Court to accept their claims, going off of nearly nothing, to substantiate their mammoth claim that Petitioner Sanchez Garcia is a “senior member,” or perhaps just a “member,” or maybe at least an “affiliate” of TdA. The Court would not accept this evidence even in a case where only nominal damages were at stake, let alone what is at stake here.
Beyond these shoddy affidavits and contradictory testimony, [the Government] haven’t provided “membership” at all as it relates to Petitioner Sanchez Garcia. Respondents have not demonstrated to this Court by a “preponderance of the evidence,” let alone the required “clear, unequivocal, and convincing”evidence, that Petitioner Sanchez Garcia is a member of TdA, nor that she is an “alien enemy” within the meaning of the TdA Proclamation. This Court is in complete agreement with Judge Brinkema’s characterization of [the Government’s] evidence at a previous hearing: “Respondents don’t have it. It’s not here.”
So, that is what you get from the Trump Administration when due process is enforced, and it is why the Trump Administration has fought so hard to avoid its obligations under the Constitution.
Judge Briones ordered that the two petitioners be released from prison, enjoined the Government from re-detaining petitioners while their TPS status remained in place, ordered the Government to provide 30 day notice, in an understandable language, of any subsequent attempt to re-detain petitioners, and — notably — enjoined the Government from removing any non-citizen from Texas or the U.S. on the basis of Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, unless and until individual hearings are made available.
