On April 15, 2025, the ACLU of Pennsylvania and the National ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project (“IRP”) sued President Donald Trump and other high-level administration officials to stop the potential deportation of A.S.R., a Venezuelan man who has been living in the United States with his wife, his child, and two step-children since 2023. A.S.R. and his family fled Venezuela when groups associated with the Maduro regime threatened him with extortion. He has petitioned for asylum in the United States.
A.S.R. was arrested on February 26, 2025 at his first ICE supervision check-in. ICE told A.S.R. that a neighbor had accused him of being a member of the gang Tren de Aragua, an allegation that A.S.R. adamantly denies. He was taken to ICE detention at Moshannon Valley Processing Center, an immigration detention facility in Philipsburg, PA that is run by the for-profit corporation GEO Group.
The ACLU filed its lawsuit on behalf of A.S.R. and a class of similarly situated Venezuelan nationals who are at or may in the future be at Moshannon and are under threat of deportation as a result of Trump’s executive order improperly using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove people from the country. The act is intended for use only in wartime, in a declared war against a foreign invasion or government, and has only been used three times in the nation’s history – during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II.
The government has produced no evidence that A.S.R. is a member of Tren de Aragua. And its use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove him or anyone else from the country, sending them to a notorious prison in El Salvador where people are sent to die, is illegal, immoral, and unethical.
On April 15, a federal district court in Western Pennsylvania issued a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deporting, and removing from the Western District of Pennsylvania, A.S.R. and similarly situated people detained at Moshannon. Unfortunately, ICE transferred A.S.R. and about ten other Venezuelan men out of the district on April 15, to Bluebonnet Detention Center in Texas, where he remains detained. On April 17, the court extended that order pending further briefing.
The ACLU is asking the court to continue its order stopping the deportation of A.S.R and others like him as the litigation proceeds and issuing a writ of habeas corpus, meaning that A.S.R. and others would have the opportunity to challenge their detention and the application of the Alien Enemies Act to him and others like him.
