The Trump administration has been arguing in court for months that it has no authority over the almost 140 Venezuelan immigrants it sent to an El Salvadorian prison this spring under a seldom applied wartime law.
Trump administration have claimed in documents and hearings that the Salvadoran government controls the men’s destiny since they are being kept by jailers in El Salvador. The administration has asserted this on numerous occasions in an attempt to demonstrate that it lacks the actual power to repatriate the immigrants.
However, the Venezuelan men’s attorneys presented a document on Monday that showed the El Salvadorian government just informed the UN that it actually has no legal obligation for the men. The Salvadoran government was only following American orders when it took the men into its jail system, according to the letter, which was issued in response to a U.N. investigation looking into some of the deportations.
According to the document, El Salvador’s actions have been restricted to the establishment of a bilateral cooperation mechanism with another state, which has allowed it to use the Salvadoran prison infrastructure for the detention of individuals detained within the purview of that other state’s legal system and law enforcement.
It continued by saying that in this situation, the competent foreign authorities alone have jurisdiction and legal obligation for these individuals due to signed international agreements and in line with the concepts of sovereignty and international cooperation in criminal cases.
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