The kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro gave the Department of Justice a splashy opportunity to show off, with Attorney General Pam Bondi beating her chest over on X about how cool and great it was to illegally capture and remove a head of state. Now, the DOJ wants to use that as its latest reason to refuse to provide due process to the 100+ Venezuelan men renditioned to CECOT, the notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador.
The Department of Justice has been locked in battle with U.S. District Judge James Boasberg since March 2025, when he had the temerity to issue a court order the DOJ didn’t feel like following. You know the one, where Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to turn the planeloads of Venezuelan deportees around rather than sending them to CECOT in secret in the dead of night.
Since then, the DOJ has done everything in its power to stop Boasberg from investigating whether the administration was in contempt of his order and stymie the judge’s efforts to provide the CECOT deportees with the due process they are owed. Now, Maduro’s abduction has given the DOJ a brand new way to refuse to obey anything Boasberg orders.
You see, according to the DOJ, since they kidnapped Maduro over the weekend and have now brought him here to stand trial on a mishmash of drug trafficking charges, they need some extra time to respond to Boasberg’s Dec. 22 order requiring them to respond today, Jan. 5, with an explanation as to how they would facilitate the due process rights of the men sent to CECOT.
Trump administration officials do not want to do that, because they know full well that many of the men they deported because they were ostensibly hardened cartel criminals were actually just innocent migrants swept up in one of the earliest rounds of mass deportations. If those men get a hearing, as Boasberg has ordered, to prove they are not gang members, that’s a problem for the DOJ. So the administration’s latest laughable excuse is that since Maduro was captured over the weekend, they now need more time to respond to the judge’s order.
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The motion, such as it is, provides no justification for the DOJ’s request to blow through Monday’s deadline. Indeed, this is the motion in its entirety:
Given substantial changes on the ground in Venezuela and the fluid nature of the unfolding situation, Defendants respectfully move for an extension to respond to this Court's Order (ECF 214) directing them to propose a remedy by Monday, January 5. Over the weekend, the United States apprehended Nicolas Maduro. As a result, the situation on the ground in Venezuela has changed dramatically. Defendants thus need additional time to determine the feasibility of various proposals. Defendants therefore request a 7-day extension to evaluate and determine what remedies are possible.
The men renditioned to CECOT were sent there thanks to President Donald Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. Spoiler alert: There is no world in which throwing random Venezuelan migrants out of the country and sending them to a foreign gulag is proper under the AEA, but even if Trump did properly invoke it, Boasberg had ruled the men still weren’t afforded a meaningful opportunity to show they were not gang members before the administration deported them under the AEA.
But Maduro’s kidnapping presents the DOJ with a golden opportunity to say that no, really, they totally cannot bring these prisoners back or afford them any due process because now that we’ve kicked off an invasion of their home country, Venezuelan migrants are all alien enemies now. They don’t come out and say it as such, but it’s clear the DOJ wants to say that now that they kidnapped Maduro, this somehow changes the calculus under the AEA, and they do not have to provide the men they deported 10 months ago with any due process.
This is especially gruesome because Boasberg’s Dec. 22 order doesn’t even require the administration to agree to bring anyone home from CECOT, saying that “the Government could also theoretically offer Plaintiffs a hearing without returning them to the United States so long as such hearing satisfied the requirements of due process.”
Literally just a lousy hearing. That’s all Boasberg is demanding.
The DOJ is trying to make sure they don’t even have to take that incredibly minor step. So, they sat on their hands until Sunday night before filing their demand for an extension. They could not be bothered to follow the very basic local court rules on this, longstanding rules which, though the DOJ might wish otherwise, are not optional to follow.
Rule 7(m) requires consultation with opposing counsel before filing this sort of motion “in a good-faith effort to determine whether there is any opposition to the relief sought and, if there is, to narrow the areas of disagreement … A party shall include in its motion a statement that the required discussion occurred, and a statement as to whether the motion is opposed.”
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Did the DOJ do those things? No, it did not. So, first thing Monday, Boasberg ordered the DOJ to file a Rule 7(m) notice by 5 PM on the same day, proving they have conferred with the plaintiffs’ attorneys. But their delay tactics have basically already succeeded on some level, since it is clear they won’t be telling Boasberg anything else today.
This shoddy motion lets the DOJ drag their feet on this particular order and tees up what is sure to be their new strategy: deport anyone they want, for whatever reason, and no one can stop them. Kidnapping Maduro created a neat little geopolitical crisis that also serves as a justification to stop Boasberg from ever, ever getting these men a meager scrap of justice. And bonus: It also justifies future mass deportations.
It’s like the Trump administration sees this as a “do not get out of jail free” card—one that it can slap down to keep these men imprisoned forever.
Lisa Needham January 06, 2026 at 12:00AM From Daily Kos
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