Administration calls on Supreme Court for permission to swiftly deport nearly 200 immigrants detained in Texas
In its latest demand to the Supreme Court to begin swiftly deporting immigrants from the United States, Donald Trump’s administration claims a group of Venezuelan men imprisoned in Texas tried to barricade themselves inside their unit, covered surveillance cameras and threatened to take hostages.
A group of 23 men the administration accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members “have proven difficult to manage,” according to a sworn statement in court documents from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official.
In an incident on April 23 that has not previously been reported, the men allegedly “refused their breakfast trays and barricaded both the front and rear entrance doors of their housing unit using bed cots” and “covered the surveillance cameras and blocked the housing unit windows.”
They “threatened to take hostages and injure facility contract staff and ICE officers” and “attempted to flood the housing unit by clogging toilets,” according to Joshua D. Johnson, acting ICE director for the Dallas office.
Can you blame them for trying to avoid an illegal deportation to a prison in a third country? They wanted to be deported (legally!) to their home country:
Another image captures a group holding up a sign that reads, in Spanish, “Help, we want to be deported. We are not terrorists.” The sign says “VZLA,” a reference to Venezuela, and suggests they are pleading with authorities to avoid their imprisonment in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, labeled by human rights groups as a “tropical gulag” and concentration camp.
