Venezuela-hired lawyers ask Salvadoran court for migrants' freedom

A law firm hired by Caracas filed a petition in El Salvador's Supreme Court Monday for the liberation of dozens of the 238 Venezuelans deported from the United States to a notoriously harsh prison in the Central American country.

US President Donald Trump invoked rarely-used wartime legislation to fly the men to El Salvador on March 16, alleging they were members of the violent Tren de Aragua gang, which their families and lawyers deny.

The deportations took place despite a US federal judge granting a temporary suspension of the expulsion order, and the men were taken in chains, their heads freshly shorn, to El Salvador's maximum security "Terrorism Confinement Center" (CECOT).

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On Monday, lawyer Jaime Ortega filed a habeas corpus petition, demanding justification be provided for the migrants' continued detention.

"They have not committed any crimes in our country," Ortega said at the court, while elsewhere in San Salvador, hundreds of protesters clamored for the Venezuelans' freedom.

Ortega said he was hired by the Venezuelan government and a committee of relatives of detained Venezuelans.

He added he had a mandate from families of 30 of the prisoners, but would eventually work for the release of the group in its "totality."

President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador is hailed at home for his crackdown on violent crime -- with tens of thousands of suspected gangsters sent to the CECOT, which he had specially built.

Human rights groups have criticized the drive for a wide range of alleged abuses.

Bukele replaced senior judges and the attorney general, and a new-look Supreme Court, friendly to the president, allowed him to seek reelection last year despite a constitutional single-term limit. He won.

"Bukele already violates the human rights of thousands of Salvadorans... and now he is preparing to violate the rights of these people from Venezuela who have not been proven guilty of a crime," protester Antonio Medrano, 47, said in the capital Monday.