Lawyers urged the courts to arrest more deportations of Venezuelans under the Act on Extraterrestrial Enemies

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union supported several fronts on Friday evening to prevent the Trump administration from expelling another group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under the expansive powers of a law rarely invoked in wartime.

More than 50 Venezuelans were to be moved outside the country – probably in Salvador – of an immigration detention center in Anson, Texas, according to two people knowing the situation. The ACLU in recent days has obtained judicial orders prohibiting similar deportations under the law, the law on extraterrestrial enemies, in places such as New York, Denver and Brownsville, Texas.

The situation in Anson was urgent enough for the ACLU lawyers to set up challenges in three different courts in the five hours.

Lawyers began with an emergency file with the Federal District Court in Abilene, Texas, in which they said that BlueBonnet Center officers in Anson had started to distribute opinions to Venezuelan immigrants informing them that they could face the deportation on Friday evening.

They asked judge James Wesley Hendrix, who supervised the case, to issue an immediate order protecting all migrants from the North District of Texas who could face the expulsion under the Extraterrestrial Enemies Act. When judge Hendrix did not grant their request quickly, the lawyers filed a request similar to the American court of appeal for the fifth circuit of New Orleans.

The lawyers then filed an emergency request to the Supreme Court, asking the judges to intervene and put an immediate break on the deportations because many venezuelans men had already been loaded on the buses, probably heading at the airport. “”