J.G.G. v. Trump is a class action and lawsuit in the United States regarding President Donald Trump's Proclamation 10903, invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) on March 14, 2025. Representing five Venezuelan people in immigration custody and threatened with imminent removal under AEA, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Democracy Forward filed the lawsuit, on March 15, 2025, against the second Trump administration in the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
On March 15, 2025, while deportation flights (under the AEA) were en route, Judge James Boasberg certified noncitizens subject to the proclamation as members of a provisional class and granted a temporary restraining order (TRO), preventing the removal of class members from the US. The Trump administration proceeded with the flights, potentially in contempt of court. 261 people were flown to El Salvador and sent to the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), including 137 Venezuelans deported under the AEA.
After the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit upheld Boasberg's TRO, on April 7, 2025, in an emergency docket order, the Supreme Court vacated Boasberg's TRO and said:
The ACLU then started filing cases in various districts where Venezuelans were in immigration detention and at risk of being deported under the AEA. However, some legal issues remained in Boasberg's court, and on April 16, he ruled that there was probable cause to hold the Trump administration in criminal contempt of court for not having turned the planes around after his March 15 order. The Department of Justice (DOJ) appealed the ruling to the court of appeals, which vacated Boasberg's ruling on August 8.
After the Supreme Court ruling, the ACLU and Democracy Forward also amended their complaint, asking Boasberg to certify two classes, one of Venezuelans already sent to CECOT under the AEA, and another of Venezuelans currently imprisoned in the US and alleged to be members of Tren de Aragua. On June 4, Boasberg certified the first class, concluding that they had been deprived of their right to due process and ordering the Trump administration to enable them to bring challenges to their removal. The DOJ again appealed the ruling to the court of appeals.
Background Trump's deportation plans and Tren de Aragua During his 2024 presidential campaign, Trump promised to deport foreign gang members in what would be called "Operation Aurora", named after Aurora, Colorado. In the previous 18 months, Aurora and the surrounding Denver metropolitan area saw the arrival of over 50,000 Venezuelan during the Venezuelan refugee crisis, and local police attributed crimes such as kidnapping, shooting, and prostitution to members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. Trump's campaign alleged that the gang had taken over Aurora, and used it to justify his broad immigration policies.
Trump repeated this intention in his inaugural address on January 20, 2025, and signed executive order 14157 designating transnational gangs such as Tren de Aragua as foreign terrorist organizations. During a diplomatic mission to Central America, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met with Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele, who offered to imprison those who had been convicted of crimes in the US at CECOT, whether those people be US citizens or foreign nationals.
Alien Enemies Act
During his presidential campaign, Trump also repeatedly stated that if reelected, he would use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport undocumented immigrants in the United States who had criminal records. A relevant part of the Alien Enemies Act says:
The act has been used by three previous presidents, but only in wartime: by James Madison against British immigrants during the War of 1812, by Woodrow Wilson against German immigrants in World War I, and by Franklin Roosevelt against Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants in World War II. A declared war requires an act of Congress; however, a determination of invasion or predatory incursion by a foreign nation does not.
Trump's deputy chief of staff for policy, Stephen Miller, had previously advocated for use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). In a September 2023 podcast interview with Charlie Kirk, Miller said that the AEA "allows you to instantaneously remove any noncitizen foreigner from an invading country", which "allows you to suspend the due process that normally applies to a removal proceeding."
Intelligence community assessments Officials familiar with the matter told the New York Times that a US intelligence community assessment from late February 2025 concluded with a moderate level of confidence that the Venezuelan government was not controlling Tren de Aragua (TDA), and that the gang was not acting on government orders and lacked the resources and organization to do so. In March, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard wrote that her office "fully supports the assessment that the foreign terrorist organization, Tren De Aragua, is acting with the support of the Maduro Regime, and thus subject to arrest, detention and removal as alien enemies of the United States." However, the Freedom of the Press Foundation filed a records request, and obtained a declassified April memo from the National Intelligence Council (NIC) that stated "while Venezuela's permissive environment enables TDA to operate, the Maduro regime probably does not have a policy of cooperating with TDA and is not directing TDA movement to and operations in the United States." A week later, Gabbard fired the NIC's acting chair, Michael Collins, and his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, with a spokesperson for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence saying that the firings were related to efforts "to end the weaponization and politicization of the Intelligence Community".
Due process
A due process clause is found in the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which prohibits the deprivation of "life, liberty, or property, without due process of law". In the context of removal pursuant to US immigration and nationality law, this is limited to procedural due process, as the substance of such law is generally immune to judicial review.Harisiades v. Shaughnessy, 342 U.S. 580, 589–590 (1952) ("It is pertinent to observe that any policy toward aliens is vitally and intricately interwoven with contemporaneous policies in regard to the conduct of foreign relations, the war power, and the maintenance of a republican form of government. Such matters are so exclusively entrusted to the political branches of government as to be largely immune from judicial inquiry or interference".). Removal is an administrative matter, so the "provisions of the Constitution securing the right of trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments have no application".Fong Yue Ting v. United States, 149 US 698, 730 (1893) ("The order of deportation is not a punishment for crime...It is but a method of enforcing the return to his own country of an alien who has not complied with the conditions upon the performance of which...his continuing to reside here shall depend....the provisions of the Constitution securing the right of trial by jury and prohibiting unreasonable searches and seizures and cruel and unusual punishments have no application."). However, procedural due process requires government officials at least give a person proper notice and an opportunity to be heard before depriving that person of their life, liberty, or property.
In Reno v. Flores, former Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia wrote "It is well established that the Fifth Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in deportation proceedings."
Initial timeline
On Friday, March 14, 2025, Trump signed presidential proclamation 10903, invoking the Alien Enemies Act and asserting that Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization from Venezuela, had invaded the United States. The White House did not announce that the proclamation had been signed until the afternoon of the next day.
Very early on Saturday, March 15, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Democracy Forward filed a class action suit in the District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of five Venezuelan men held in immigration detention. The ACLU stated later that morning that it filed the suit, J.G.G. v. Trump, in anticipation that Trump would be invoking the act, as news media had previously reported that Trump was expected to do so. The suit was assigned to judge James Boasberg. That morning, noting the exigent circumstances, he approved a temporary restraining order for the five plaintiffs, and he ordered a 5p.m. hearing to determine whether he would certify the class in the class action.
In the mid-afternoon, detainees were taken from El Valle detention center in Raymondville, Texas, to buses. Subsequently, the White House announced that Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act, posting a copy of the proclamation to its website.
At 5p.m., Boasberg began the court hearing to determine whether to certify the class and grant a temporary restraining order for the class. Boasberg asked deputy assistant attorney general Drew Ensign if the Trump administration was planning to carry out deportations using the Alien Enemies Act in the next 48 hours. Ensign replied that he did not know, and Boasberg gave Ensign around 40 minutes to find out, pausing the hearing at 5:22p.m. Meanwhile, at Harlingen, Texas, two planes with Venezuelan deportees took off, one at 5:26p.m. and the other at 5:44p.m. Boasberg resumed the hearing around 5:55p.m., with Ensign saying that he still had no specific information about the Trump administration's plans.
At 6:48p.m., having stated that he would certify the class and grant a temporary restraining order, Boasberg told the DOJ lawyers "You shall inform your clients of this immediately, and that any plane containing these folks that is going to take off or is in the air needs to be returned to the United States". The New York Times reports that at this point, "one of the planes was over Mexico; a second was over the Gulf of Mexico ... and a third had not yet taken off." Though Boasberg specifically ordered that any planes in the air carrying those covered by his order be turned back and those individuals returned to the US, the Trump administration allowed the flights to proceed, possibly violating the verbal court order. The hearing ended, and the court posted Boasberg's written order, certifying the class and granting a temporary restraining order for the class.
At 7:36 p.m., ten minutes after Boasberg's written order was published, a third deportation flight departed from Harlingen. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official later told the court that none of the deportees on this third flight were deported under the Alien Enemies Act.
Later that evening, each of the three planes landed at Soto Cano air base in Comayagua, Honduras, and after a period of time, each left Honduras, landing in San Salvador, El Salvador, in the early hours of the morning of March 16. Taken together, the three flights took over 260 migrants to El Salvador, where most were taken into custody at the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT). Eight women and one Nicaraguan man were on the deportation flights. They were not accepted by the Salvadoran government and returned to the US. Later that morning, Bukele tweeted that 238 of the alleged gang members are associated with Tren de Aragua and 23 with MS-13, a Salvadoran gang.
Subsequent legal proceedings
Use of the Alien Enemies Act and due process
Initial appeals to the court of appeals