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      White House’s defense for not recalling deportations ‘one heck of a stretch’, says judge

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      The Trump administration claimed to a federal judge on Monday that it did not recall deportation flights of hundreds of suspected Venezuelan gang members over the weekend despite his specific instructions because that was not expressly included in the formal written order issued afterwards.The administration also said that even if James Boasberg, the chief US district judge in Washington, had included that instruction in his formal order, his authority to compel the planes to return disappeared the moment the planes entered international airspace.The extraordinary arguments suggested the White House took advantage of its own perceived uncertainty with a federal court order to do as it pleased, testing the limits of the judicial system to hold to account an administration set on circumventing adverse rulings.An incredulous Boasberg at one stage asked the administration: “Isn’t then the better course to return the planes to the United States and figure out what to do, than say: ‘We don’t care; we’ll do what we want’?”The showdown between the administration and the judge reached a crescendo over the weekend after the US president secretly invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport, without normal due process, Venezuelans over age 14 who the government says belong to the Tren de Aragua gang.The underlying basis for Trump to invoke the statute is unclear because it historically requires the president to identify a state adversary, and Boasberg on Saturday issued a temporary restraining order blocking deportations of five Venezuelans who had filed suit against the government.At an emergency hearing on Saturday evening, Boasberg extended his injunction to block the deportation of all Venezuelan migrants using Alien Enemies Act authority, and told the administration that any deportation flights already in the air needed to be recalled.By the time of the hearing, two flights had already taken off and a third flight left after Boasberg issued his ruling. All three flights landed in El Salvador, where the deportees were taken to a special maximum security prison, after Boasberg issued his written order.The Trump administration claimed at a hearing on Monday that it believed it had complied with the written order issued by Boasberg, which did not include his verbal instructions for any flights already departed to return to the US.“Oral statements are not injunctions and the written orders always supersede whatever may have been stated in the record,” Abhishek Kambli, the deputy assistant attorney general for the justice department’s civil division, argued for the administration.The judge appeared unimpressed by that contention. “You felt that you could disregard it because it wasn’t in the written order. That’s your first argument? The idea that because my written order was pithier so it could be disregarded, that’s one heck of a stretch,” Boasberg said.The administration also suggested that even if Boasberg had included the directive in his written order, by the time he had granted the temporary restraining order, the deportation flights were outside of the judge’s jurisdiction.The judge expressed similar skepticism at the second argument, noting that federal judges still have authority over US government officials who make the decisions about the planes, even if the planes themselves were outside of US airspace.“The problem is the equitable power of United States courts is not so limited,” Boasberg said. “It’s not a question that the plane was or was not in US airspace.” Boasberg added. “My equitable powers are pretty clear that they do not lapse at the airspace’s edge.”At times, the Trump administration appeared to touch on a separate but related position that the judge’s authority to block the deportations clashed with Trump’s authority to direct US military forces and foreign relations without review by the courts.Boasberg expressed doubt at the strength of that argument, as well as Kambli’s separate claim that he could not provide more details about when the deportation flights took off and how many flights left the US on Saturday, before and possibly after his order.Kambli said he was not authorized to provide those details on account of national security concerns, even in private, to the judge himself. Asked whether the information was classified, Kambli demurred. Boasberg ordered the government to provide him with more information by noon on Tuesday.The statements offered by the administration in federal district court in Washington offered a more legally refined version of public statements from White House officials about the possibility that they had defied a court order.White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt insisted on Monday that the administration acted within “the bounds of immigration law in this country” and said the Trump team did not believe a verbal order carried the same legal weight as a written order.But the White House’s “border czar” Tom Homan offered greater defiance at the court order and told Fox News in an interview that the court order came too late for Boasberg to have jurisdiction over the matter, saying: “I don’t care what the judges think.” More

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      in US Politics

      White House denies violating judge’s order with Venezuela deportations

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      The White House has denied allegations that it engaged in a “a blatant violation” of a judge’s order by deporting about 250 Venezuelan alleged gang members to El Salvador on Saturday, with the US border czar appearing to contradict the denial on Monday by declaring: “I don’t care what the judges think.”The US district judge James E Boasberg has scheduled a hearing for Monday afternoon to demand an explanation about why his Saturday order temporarily blocking the deportation flights had apparently been ignored.The Trump administration had ordered at least some of the deportations using the Alien Enemies Act, a law from 1798 that is meant to be used during wartime. The president quietly invoked the law on Friday and progressive groups almost immediately sued to stop it.On Saturday, during a court hearing over the case, Boasberg added a verbal order that any flights that had already departed with Venezuelan immigrants using the Alien Enemies Act turn around and return to the US.“This is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately,” he told the justice department, according to the Washington Post.At that point (about 6.51pm ET, according to Axios), both flights were off the Yucatán peninsula, according to flight paths posted on X.Later on Saturday night, however, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, confirmed that the planes had landed in his country and the alleged gang members were in custody, posting on social media, “Oopsie … too late” above a news article about the judge’s order to turn the planes around.White House officials insisted that the migrants were no longer in US territory when the judge issued his order, claiming that it therefore did not apply.The administration “did not ‘refuse to comply’ with a court order”, said the White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, in a statement on Monday.She also argued, however, that the order itself did not need to be followed in the first place.“The order, which had no lawful basis, was issued after terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from US territory,” Leavitt said. “The written order and the administration’s actions do not conflict.“As the supreme court has repeatedly made clear – federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from US soil and repel a declared invasion.“A single judge in a single city cannot direct the movements of an aircraft carrying foreign alien terrorists who were physically expelled from US soil.”Other Trump administration officials, who have not been named, echoed similar statements to Axios about the ruling coming too late, claiming that the administration did not defy the judge as the planes were “already outside of US airspace” and therefore arguing that the order was “not applicable”.In a court filing on Monday, lawyers for the administration said that the judge’s oral order was “not enforceable”.ABC News also reported that the administration cited “operational” and “national security” reasons that the planes needed to land, and that the two planes took off during the hearing on Saturday.When asked by a reporter on Sunday whether the administration violated the judge’s orders, Donald Trump said: “I don’t know, you have to speak to the lawyers about that.” He added: “I can tell you this, these were bad people.”Reuters reported that the Trump administration stated in a court filing on Sunday that “some” of the Venezuelans had already been removed from the US before the judge’s order, but did not provide any further details.The New York Times noted that the filing implied that the government had other legal grounds for the deportations of the Venezuelans, other than the use of the Alien Enemies Act that was blocked by the judge.The American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, which sued to stop the use of the act, added in a court filing on Monday that they believe that the government violated the court order , calling the administration’s actions a “blatant violation of the court’s order”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe rights groups asked the judge to compel the administration to clarify whether any flights departed after the judge’s orders, and to provide more information on the flight timings.On Monday morning, Boasberg scheduled a 4pm hearing for the Trump administration to explain if they defied his order.Later on Monday morning, Tom Homan, Trump’s “border czar”, told reporters: “By the time the order came, the plane was already over international waters, with a plane full of terrorists and significant public safety threats.”He added: “To turn the plane around over international waters” and “come back with terrorists back to the United States, that’s not what this president promised the American people”.He followed up the remarks in an appearance on Fox and Friends, where according to the Hill he said: “I don’t care what the judges think. I don’t care.”He repeated his claim that the flight was “already in international waters” but also questioned why the judge would want “terrorists returned to the United States”: “Look, President Trump, by proclamation, invoked the authorities of the Alien Enemies Act, which he has a right to do, and it’s a gamechanger.”The Georgetown law professor Steve Vladeck criticised the administration’s argument that it was too late to act once the planes had left the US. He argued on social media that “a federal court’s jurisdiction does not stop at the water’s edge” but rather, “the question is whether the defendants are subject to the court order, not where the conduct being challenged takes place”.Vladeck also told the Associated Press that although the judge’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final written order, nevertheless the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.Peter Markowitz, a Cardozo Law School professor and immigration enforcement expert, told Reuters that he believed the Trump administration’s actions “most certainly violate” the court’s order.In a statement on Monday, the Democratic senators Alex Padilla, Cory Booker, Dick Durbin and Peter Welch condemned Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.“Let’s be clear: we are not at war, and immigrants are not invading our country,” they said. “Furthermore, courts determine whether people have broken the law – not a president acting alone, and not immigration agents picking and choosing who gets imprisoned or deported.”The deportations may not be the only instance of the White House directly violating a court order, after the administration reportedly deported Dr Rasha Alawieh, a kidney transplant specialist and Brown University professor, despite a court order temporarily blocking her expulsion.Citing her attorney and court documents, the New York Times reported that the 34-year-old Lebanese citizen – who had a valid US visa – was detained on Thursday upon returning to the US after visiting family in Lebanon. A federal judge had reportedly ordered the government to provide the court with 48 hours’ notice before deporting Alawieh, but she was reportedly put on a flight to Paris anyway. A hearing in her case is set for Monday. More

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      With Deportations, Trump Steps Closer to Showdown With Judicial Branch

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      The Trump administration moved one large step closer to a constitutional showdown with the judicial branch of government when airplane-loads of Venezuelan detainees deplaned in El Salvador even though a federal judge had ordered that the planes reverse course and return the detainees to the United States.The right-wing president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele, bragged that the 238 detainees who had been aboard the aircraft were transferred to a Salvadoran “Terrorism Confinement Center,” where they would be held for at least a year.“Oopsie … Too late,” Mr. Bukele wrote in a social media post on Sunday morning that was recirculated by the White House communications director, Steven Cheung.Around the same time, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in another social media post, thanked Mr. Bukele for a lengthy post detailing the migrants’ incarceration.“This sure looks like contempt of court to me,” said David Super, a law professor at Georgetown University. “You can turn around a plane if you want to.”Some details of the government’s actions remained unclear, including the exact time the planes landed. In a Sunday afternoon filing, the Trump administration said the State Department and Homeland Security Department were “promptly notified” of the judge’s written order when it was posted to the electronic docket at 7:26 p.m. Eastern time on Saturday. The filing implied that the government had a different legal authority for deporting the Venezuelans besides the one blocked by the judge, which could provide a basis for them to remain in El Salvador while the order is appealed.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘Maga since forever’: mercenary mogul Erik Prince pushes to privatize Trump deportation plans

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      Silicon Valley has played a sizable part in the early days of Donald Trump’s new administration, but another familiar face in the Maga-verse is beginning to emerge: businessman Erik Prince, often described by his critics as a living “Bond villain”.Prince is the most famous mercenary of the contemporary era and the founder of the now defunct private military company Blackwater. For a time, it was a prolific privateer in the “war on terror”, racking up millions in US government contracts by providing soldiers of fortune to the CIA, Pentagon and beyond.Now he is a central figure among a web of other contractors trying to sell Trump advisers on a $25bn deal to privatize the mass deportations of 12 million migrants.In an appearance on NewsNation, he immediately tried to temper that his plan had any traction.“No indications, so far,” said Prince about a federal contract materializing. “Eventually if they’re going to hit those kinds of numbers and scale, they’re going to need additional private sector.”But the news had people wondering, how is Prince going to factor into the second Trump presidency?Sean McFate, a professor at Georgetown University who has advised the Pentagon and the CIA, said: “Erik Prince has always been politically connected to Maga, the Maga movement, and that’s going back to 2015.”Prince, himself a special forces veteran and ex-Navy Seal, is a known business associate of Steve Bannon, the architect of Trump’s first electoral win. Prince even appeared with him last July at a press conference before Bannon surrendered to authorities and began a short prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena.“He comes from a wealthy Republican family,” said McFate, who has authored books on the global mercenary industry and is familiar with Prince’s history. “His sister, Betsy DeVos, is the former education secretary, and he’s been a Maga, not just a Maga, he’s been a Steve Bannon, Maga Breitbart Republican, since forever.”Beginning during the two Bush administrations, Blackwater was a major recipient of Pentagon money flowing into wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But a massacre in Baghdad at the hands of some of his contractors led to prison sentences, congressional inquiries and blacklistings of the firm.Years later, Trump would come to the rescue: pardoning all of the Blackwater mercenaries involved in the massacre.Now, with the current administration, which is doling out free advertising to Elon Musk and other Maga loyalists, Prince has a new and familiar ally in Washington.“This is a big market time for him,” said McFate. “He’s very quiet when there’s a Democrat in the White House and gets very noisy when a Republican, especially Trump, is in the White House; I expect this to be one of many things he will try to pitch.”Do you have tips about private military contractors or the world of Erik Prince? Tip us securely here or text Ben Makuch at BenMakuch.90 on Signal.McFate said Prince is nothing if not an “opportunist” and an “egotist” with a penchant for getting into media cycles.“If Trump or somebody says ‘That’s an interesting idea,’ he will pump out a PowerPoint slideshow proposing an idea, whether or not he can do it,” he said. Prince also has the ear of Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, and was a character witness for her Senate confirmation.There’s no denying Prince is a relentless pitchman, offering world governments billion-dollar plans to privatize wars or other less expensive espionage activities. For example, he was recently named to the advisory board of the London-based private intelligence firm Vantage Intelligence, which advises “sovereign wealth funds” and other “high-net-worth individuals”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPost-Blackwater and under new companies, he has proposed missions in Afghanistan, Ukraine, Congo, Libya and, purportedly, Venezuela – a country he often mentions as ripe for overthrow on his podcast, Off Leash.A senior commander in an alliance of former Venezuelan soldiers who defected from the Chavista regime told the Guardian his organization has been asking Prince for help against the country’s current president, Nicolás Maduro.“We have sent messages to Mr Erik Prince to try to see if we can meet,” said Javier Nieto Quintero, a Florida-based former captain in the Venezuelan military and leader of the Venezuelan dissident organization Carive. “If he wants, we can provide help, support in terms of information, intelligence, or any other area based on the freedom of our country.”Nieto Quintero, who said Prince has yet to respond, and Carive was used in a failed operation against Maduro in 2020 led by a former Green Beret. In what is notoriously known as the “Bay of Piglets”, six of Nieto Quintero’s men were killed and close to 100 captured, including two former US servicemen recruited for the job who were freed two years ago from a Caracas prison.Prince’s eye has undoubtedly been focused on Venezuela, a country with vast oil reserves that has long been in the crosshairs of Trump’s retinue. In recent months, Prince has supported a Venezuelan opposition movement called Ya Casi Venezuela, claiming to have raised more than $1m for it over the summer. The Maduro regime is now investigating Prince’s links to the campaign, which it paints as a sort of front for western governments fostering its downfall.Venezuela has reason to fear Prince and his connections to American spies: the CIA, with a rich history of covert actions in Latin America, was at least aware of a plot to overthrow Maduro’s predecessor Hugo Chávez in 2002.“We were in contact with Ya Casi Venezuela, but a meeting never took place,” said Nieto Quintero. “We have continued to grow and strengthen our ranks and our doctrine, our plans, our institutional, military, security and defense proposals.”Prince is officially active in the region. Last week, Ecuador announced it would be partnering with Prince in a “strategic alliance” to reinforce the country’s controversial “war on crime” with his expertise.Prince did not respond to a request for comment sent through his encrypted cellphone company, Unplugged. Ya Casi Venezuela did not answer numerous emails about its relationship with Prince. As of now, no business deal between the Trump administration and Prince has been signed or publicly disclosed.But across his career as both a shadowy contractor and a political figure, who just graced the stages of the latest Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) to applause and then spoke to Harvard Republicans, the public and private sides of Prince remain somewhat antithetical.“He likes to be in the news, which makes him a very bad mercenary,” said McFate. “Frankly, most mercenaries I talk to in Africa, the big ones, despise him.” More

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      in Elections

      What Is Tren de Aragua?

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      A gang with roots in a Venezuelan prison, the criminal group was at the center of President Trump’s order invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.President Trump’s executive order on Saturday invoking the Alien Enemies Act targeted Venezuelan citizens 14 years and older with ties to the transnational gang Tren de Aragua, saying they “are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”Mr. Trump’s order was quickly challenged in court, but the gang has been a growing source of concern for U.S. officials over the last year. The Biden administration labeled Tren de Aragua a transnational criminal organization in 2024, the New York Police Department has highlighted its activity on the East Coast, and the Trump White House began the process of designating it a foreign terrorist organization in January.Here is what we know about the gang:A rising force out of VenezuelaTren de Aragua (Train of Aragua, or Aragua Train) has roots in Tocorón prison in Venezuela’s northern Aragua state, which the group’s leaders had transformed into a mini-city with a pool, restaurants and a zoo. They reportedly recorded executions and torture there to maintain control over other prisoners.As Venezuela’s economy collapsed and its government under President Nicolás Maduro became more repressive, the group began exploiting vulnerable migrants. Tren de Aragua’s influence soon stretched into other parts of Latin America, and it developed into one of the region’s most violent and notorious criminal organizations, focusing on sex trafficking, human smuggling and drugs.Colombian officials in 2022 accused the gang of at least 23 murders after the police began to find body parts in bags. Alleged members have also been apprehended in Chile and in Brazil, where the gang aligned itself with Primeiro Comando da Capital, one of that country’s biggest organized crime rings.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump invokes 18th-century wartime act to deport five Venezuelans

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      Donald Trump has invoked the wartime Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport five Venezuelan nationals from the US.In a presidential proclamation issued on Saturday, the White House said: “Tren de Aragua (TdA) is a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization with thousands of members, many of whom have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States.”The invocation of the wartime act comes just hours after a federal judge temporarily blocked Trump’s administration from using the 1798 Act to carry out its intended deportations of the Venezuelans.On Saturday, US district judge James Boasberg of the federal district court in Washington DC agreed to issue temporary restraining order that prevents the Venezuelans’ deportation for 14 days.“Given the exigent circumstances that it [the court] has been made aware of this morning, it has determined that an immediate Order is warranted to maintain the status quo until a hearing can be set,” Boasberg wrote in his order.Boasberg’s decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed the same day by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward. The organizations charge that the Trump administration unlawfully invoked the Alien Enemies Act.In the lawsuit, ACLU and Democracy Forward argue the act has been invoked only three times in the history of the US: the war of 1812, first world war and second world war.“It cannot be used here against nationals of a country – Venezuela – with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” the lawsuit stated.“The government’s proclamation would allow agents to immediately put noncitizens on planes without any review of any aspect of the determination that they are alien enemies,” the lawsuit added.A remote hearing has been scheduled for today at 5pm before Boasberg. Both ACLU and Democracy Forward will ask that the temporary restraining order be broadened to everyone in danger of removal under the act, the civil liberties organizations said.The president had previously ordered his administration to designate Venezuela’s Tren De Aragua gang as a foreign terrorist organization.With Trump characterizing the gang as a foreign force that is invading the US, civil liberties organizations such as the ACLU fear that Trump may invoke the 1798 act “unlawfully during peacetime to accelerate mass deportations, sidestepping the limits of this wartime authority and the procedures and protections in immigration law.”The invocation is expected to face legal challenges almost immediately. The 227-year-old law is designed to primarily be used in wartime, and only Congress has the authority to declare a war. But the president does have the discretion to invoke the law to defend against a “threatened or ongoing invasion or predatory incursion”, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a non-partisan authority on law and policy.“This law shouldn’t be invoked because migration is not an invasion, and we’re not in a war time,” said Juliana Macedo do Nascimento, the deputy director of federal advocacy for United We Dream, an immigrant rights organization. “It’s extremely horrifying that we, as immigrants, are being labeled as terrorists, as invaders.”Those subject to the Alien Enemies Act could be deported without a court hearing or asylum interview, and their cases would be governed by wartime authority rather than by immigration law.The Alien Enemies Act specifically allows the president to detain, relocate, or deport immigrants based on their country of ancestry – and crucially covers not only citizens of hostile nations but also “natives”, which could include people who may have renounced their foreign citizenship and sought legal residency in the US.The centuries-old law was also used to arrest more than 31,000 people – mostly people of Japanese, German and Italian ancestry – as “alien enemies” during the second world war, and played a role in the mass removal and incarceration of Japanese Americans during the war.Trump has been building his case for invoking the act for years by characterizing the influx of migrants at the southern border as an “invasion”. He also previewed his invocation in an executive order on his inauguration day, directing the secretaries of state to plan by preparing facilities “necessary to expedite the removal” of those subject to the act.“By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil, including our cities and inner cities,” he said in his inaugural address.Though anti-immigrant politicians and groups have long advocated for the use of the act in response to unlawful border crossings, Macedo do Nascimento said a number of executive orders and congressional policies have already broadened the federal government’s authorities to detain and deport immigrants.“There are already laws that allow for mass detention. There are already laws, like the Laiken Riley Act, that would broaden the dragnet of people who can be detained,” Macedo do Nascimento said. “So the idea of him invoking the Alien Enemies Act feels kind of needless. To me, it is really about building the narrative to label immigrants as terrorists.” More

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      Judge Rejects Attempts to Temporarily Stop Migrant Detention at Guantánamo

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      A federal judge on Friday rejected for now efforts to block the Trump administration from sending migrants to the American military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, declaring that because the government had emptied the wartime prison of those detainees, the petitions were moot.Judge Carl Nichols of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia expressed doubts toward those bringing challenges on behalf of the migrants, a potentially favorable sign for the administration as it seeks to use the base in President Trump’s deportation campaign.Mr. Trump has said he wants to use Guantánamo’s 30,000 beds “to detain the worst criminal illegal aliens threatening the American people.” He issued an executive order in January to expand the Migrant Operations Center there “to provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.” The administration has sent two groups of migrants to Guantánamo, but it is not clear how many were considered dangerous criminals.Days before the hearing on Friday, the Trump administration abruptly returned a group of migrants it had sent to Guantánamo to the United States, without indicating why. It was the second time federal officials had suddenly cleared the base of migrants who had been flown there. In late February, the government repatriated all but one of 178 detained migrants to Venezuela after they spent just a few weeks at the facility. One migrant was brought back to the United States.Judge Nichols on Friday considered two challenges brought by migrants and advocacy groups on their behalf. Less than 30 minutes after the lawyers finished their arguments, he said the plaintiffs had “failed to established they are suffering irreparable harm” that warranted a temporary order to halt the administration’s policies.Judge Nichols said that if the government sent any of the migrants in question to Guantánamo, he would be prepared to consider issuing an emergency order. Lawyers for the Trump administration said they would notify the judge if any plaintiffs were sent there, and were instructed to inform the court by Wednesday of how early in the relocation process they would do so.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Administration Moves More Migrants to Guantánamo Bay

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      The military transported about 15 immigration detainees from Texas to the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, on Sunday, bringing in new migrants who have been designated for deportation days after it cleared the base of its first group of deportees.No new migrants had been sent to the base since the Homeland Security Department cleared it of 178 Venezuelans on Thursday.A brief announcement did not identify the nationalities of the newest arrivals. Nor did it give exact figures. But a government official said they were in the category of “high-threat illegal aliens,” and therefore were being held in Camp 6, a prison that until last month housed detainees in the war on terrorism.Last week, the Trump administration delivered 177 Venezuelan men who had been designated for deportation from Guantánamo to the Venezuelan government on an airstrip in Honduras.It is unclear why those men had to be taken to Guantánamo on 13 military flights from El Paso from Feb. 4 to Feb. 17, and then shuttled to an air base in Honduras on two chartered U.S. aircraft. On Feb. 10, Venezuela sent one of its commercial airliners to El Paso for 190 other Venezuelan citizens the United States wanted to deport.Juan E. Agudelo, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official who is based in Miami, said in a court filing on Thursday that the administration was using Guantánamo to “temporarily house aliens before they are removed to their home country or a safe third country.” Mr. Agudelo was unable to predict the length of the average stay for a migrant before deportation beyond “the time necessary to effect the removal orders.”Sunday’s transfer happened without advanced notice. The U.S. government declined a request last week from a consortium of U.S. civil liberties lawyers that asked for 72 hours’ notice before more people in homeland security custody were sent there.The government said in a filing that it had made arrangements for would-be deportees being held there to speak by phone with lawyers. Three of the men who were sent home on Thursday had one-hour calls with lawyers who had sued for access to the migrants and specifically named those three. More