Federal Judge Shreds DOJ’s Bullshit Venezuelan Gang Affiliation Claims

Legal Issues

from the high-on-their-own-supply dept

The administration’s justification for reviving the justifiably reviled Alien Enemies Act is the literally unbelievable claim that the Venezuelan government has sent Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members to the United States to wreak general havoc, something the Trump Administration claims is a literal act of war.

It’s just not happening. There’s no link between TdA and the Venezuelan government. There’s no evidence showing TdA poses any more of a threat to the US and its national security than any other foreign or domestic gang. But this is where the leverage is that can be used to expel as many Venezuelan migrants as possible. So, the original lie is buttressed by equally dubious gang member assessments, some of them performed by disgraced ex-cops and employees of private prison companies.

Fortunately, some judges are calling bullshit on the government’s TdA declarations. This case, highlighted by Aaron Reichlin-Melnick on Bluesky, involves a Venezuelan couple who are still being hounded by ICE, despite multiple federal judges ruling they can’t be jailed or deported.

The couple have been dealing with this sort of thing since first coming to the United States in 2022, as Robert Moore reports for El Paso Matters:

ICE officials have repeatedly referred to them as leaders or senior members of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, but judges have repeatedly said the government has produced no evidence to support the allegation. ICE accounts on the social media site X have repeatedly labeled the couple as Tren de Aragua gang members, even after Briones said in court the government hadn’t presented evidence to back up the claim.

“They have gone through four different judges, none of whom thought they should be detained. They have deep ties to their community in the United States. They have three minor children. They’ve been living peacefully in our country since 2022,” Benoit said. 

Yet another judge has ruled in favor of the couple. This time it’s District Court Judge David Briones, who finds plenty of things he doesn’t like about the government’s literally incredible TdA association claims. The order [PDF] leads things off by quoting the judge’s earlier order, denying the government an extension of time to file a reply to the couple’s relief request:

To date, Respondents have not provided this Court with a single reason as to why Petitioners have been designated as Alien Enemies. To date, Respondents have not provided this Court with a single reason as to whether Petitioners’ “circumstances have materially changed” which would warrant rearrest and incarceration by ICE. […] To date, Respondents have not provided the Court with anything useful.

Hilariously, one of the assertions the government made about TdA affiliation was this, a statement that definitively undermines its wild-ass claims that this gang is somehow acting with the funding and direct support of the Venezuelan government:

Petitioner [Luddis Norelia] Sanchez Garcia then allegedly said “she knows other members of Tren de Aragua” and that “she separated from her ex-husband approximately ten years ago and that her ex-husband was killed by the Venezuelan government due to his affiliation to Tren de Aragua.“

A lot of the government’s specious assertions had already been laughed out of court by a similarly skeptical judge in Virginia during oral arguments, when she dealt with ICE’s detainment of the same couple earlier this year. That skepticism is quoted generously in Judge Brione’s decision:

JUDGE BRINKEMA: “Luddis is a senior member of the TDA.” How do you get from somebody who was married 10 years ago to a TDA gang member, marriage, all of a sudden she’s a senior member? This is a terrible, terrible affidavit. If this were before me in a criminal case and you were asking to get a warrant issued on this, I’d throw you out of my chambers. No agent should do this type of editorializing, not when people’s liberty is at stake. I expect more from the government than this kind of very shoddy work. This assumptions and putting words in people’s mouths.

And here’s Judge Briones’ take on the same shoddy work, which apparently hasn’t changed at all since being kicked out of court on the other side of the country.

At the hearing with Judge Brinkema, as well as the April 23, 2025 Habeas Corpus hearing in this Court, Respondents and the Government based the entirety of their case on multiple levels of hearsay, hidden within declarations of declarants who have no personal knowledge about the facts they are attesting to. These declarants are not the ones who interviewed Petitioner Sanchez Garcia, and they are not the ones who captured her allegedly incriminating statement on March 10, 2025 in Washington, D.C., and are not the ones who collected “intelligence” and generated reports that contain “highly reliable and verified” information. Further, these declarants are not the ones who conducted interviews of law enforcement informants who allegedly identified Petitioner Sanchez Garcia as a member of the TdA. What is astonishing is that these declarants cannot even so much identify what government official did receive the alleged information directly. […] The Court would not accept this evidence even in a case where only nominal damages were at stake, let alone what is at stake here.

[…]

Beyond these shoddy affidavits and contradictory testimony, Respondents haven’t provided “membership” at all as it relates to Petitioner Sanchez Garcia.

There’s more following that word bomb that further details the government’s public and private contradictory assertions about Sanchez Garcia. Before ordering the couple’s immediate release, Judge Briones fires another shot across the government’s bow:

This Court takes clear offense to Respondents wasting judicial resources to admit to the Court it has no evidence, yet seek to have this Court determine Petitioner Sanchez Puente [Sanchez Garcia’s husband] is “guilty by association.”

Of course, this won’t stop the DOJ, DHS, and others in the administration from doing what they’re doing. What it will continue to do, however, is what’s listed in the above paragraph: waste judicial resources, anger judges, and deprive as many people of their liberty as possible until the government is finally told the courts have had enough of this bullshit.

Filed Under: david briones, dhs, doj, donald trump, ice, immigration, kristi noem, mass deportations, pam bondi, tda