Washington, DC, May 22, 2025 – May 21, 2025, the federal district court in Georgia ordered the federal government to refrain from disappearing Venezuelan men under the Alien Enemy Act (AEA) of 1798.
Judge Clayland extended the block to relocating Venezuelan men from the United States before receiving the basic due process. The client seeking asylum is using Initial Yapa for his own safety. The American Immigration Council is a joint counsel in the case of Yapa along with the ACLU.
In his judgment, Judge Rand wrote:
“The public interest was not always vocal, but I remember that these constitutional protections belong to people who attend lunch at a local Rotary club, enjoy war stories at VFW Hall, drink beer at the lodge of the Moose Club, and only those who belong to those who are not allocated based on political views. We continue to create this basic principle.
Yapa lives in Wilmington, North Carolina and has been in custody at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia since February 2025. Georgia is a private prison with a well-known history of abuse and abuse of the people they had there.
The US government has accused Yapa of being a member of Venezuelan gangster Tren de Aragua. This is despite government lawyers admitting in court documents that they cannot “examine” this unfounded accusation.
“This ruling confirms that our client, like everyone in the United States, has a fundamental right to legitimate proceedings and a fair day in court,” said Rebecca Casler, senior litigation attorney for the American Council of Immigration. “We’ve already seen some appalling abuse happening under the Trump administration’s AEA’s reckless call. This is a law that has never been used before in the absence of legitimate processes or declared war. Hundreds of people are now whod at the expense of US taxpayers in the infamous prisons of CECOT, EL SALVADOR. In the middle of the night, Secott was detained there indefinitely on behalf of the US.”
The Trump administration has denounced people with membership in Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua and has vanished to El Salvador’s top security prisons, evoking the AEA without proof of their membership. The Supreme Court has reduced the federal government’s ability to quickly transfer groups of people currently held in Texas under the Act, but there is no national block for the use of the AEA. This was the first decision in Georgia, where Yapa is in custody, excludes the application of the administrative AEA without legitimate procedures.
“In its ruling, the court clearly stated that it should prove something very fundamental to American identity. The constitution applies to everyone. It argues that the administration is someone who claims to be a gang member without giving him the right to challenge his claim.
For more details on the case, please see here.
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