The American Civil Liberties Union filed another lawsuit on Monday seeking to stop the Trump administration from using a powerful wartime statute to deport to El Salvador immigrants from Venezuela who have been accused of being violent gang members.
The lawsuit, brought in Federal District Court in Colorado, was the third of its kind filed in recent days, joining similar legal challenges that were filed last week in Texas and New York.
Lawyers for the A.C.L.U. brought the suit on behalf of two men — known in court papers only by the their initials, D.B.U. and R.M.M. The men claim they have been wrongly accused by the administration of being members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.
Court papers say that D.B.U., 32, was arrested on Jan. 26 at a gathering that federal drug and immigration agents have repeatedly described as a Tren de Aragua party. After his arrest, the papers say, he denied being a member of the gang and has not been charged with any crime.
Federal agents arrested R.M.M., 25, last month after they saw him standing with three other Hispanic men near their vehicles outside a residence in Colorado that was under surveillance as part of an investigation into Tren de Aragua, court papers said.
R.M.M. has claimed that he had nothing to do with the gang and had gone to the location with friends “to meet a prospective buyer for his vehicle at a public meeting,” the papers said.