Buses Turn Back in the Dead of Night
According to the ACLU, some detainees had already been loaded onto buses and transported to airports. A harrowing audio recording—posted to TikTok and cited in court filings—depicts detained men claiming they were falsely labeled gang members and taken from the Bluebonnet detention center in Texas before abruptly being returned.
One of the men, Diover Millan, 24, was granted Temporary Protected Status after arriving in 2023 and had no criminal record, according to his wife. “I’m scared,” she said, relaying that her husband had been told he was being transferred to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador—until a last-minute phone call redirected the bus.
Historic Law Reawakened
At the core of the legal drama is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a statute conceived in an era of naval skirmishes and political paranoia. Rarely invoked, it grants the president sweeping authority to deport nationals from enemy countries during wartime. Trump’s administration deployed the act to expedite removals of suspected members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan-born gang now designated as a terrorist group.
More than 200 men, including Venezuelans and Salvadorans, have already been sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, the government confirmed. Among them was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran man deported in error—an admission that sparked sharp criticism of the administration’s procedures.
