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A senior House Democrat is urging the Trump administration to return hundreds of alleged gang members who were recently deported to El Salvador, marking a significant escalation in the ongoing immigration debate.

During a Tuesday hearing, Representative Jamie Raskin (D-MD), the ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, made a forceful appeal, stating, “I call on my colleagues … to demand that the Trump Administration comply with all judicial orders while appealing whichever ones they want to appeal, and to demand the return of people unlawfully taken to El Salvador on that so-called plane full of ‘gang bangers.'”

The deportations in question involved two aircraft carrying suspected illegal immigrants with alleged ties to Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs. These individuals were sent to San Salvador following an agreement between former President Trump and El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, which arranged for their detention in the country’s maximum-security facility.

The deportation initiative faced a setback when Judge James Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order, preventing Trump from utilizing the Alien Enemies Act for further gang member deportations. This decision has prompted some Republican lawmakers to call for the judge’s impeachment, while the Trump administration seeks Supreme Court intervention to resume ICE deportations.

During the committee proceedings, Raskin criticized the deportations as a “blatant violation of American due process and all of our constitutional values.”

Representative Mary Gay Scanlon (D-PA) offered a nuanced perspective, saying, “Nobody here is saying that we shouldn’t deport or punish violent criminals, but we are saying that you need to prove that someone is a violent criminal before you can exert this kind of punishment on them.”

Raskin has taken additional steps by sending correspondence to senior Trump administration officials, seeking detailed information about the El Salvador deportation flights. He emphasized that these individuals should have been granted the opportunity to contest ICE’s gang membership allegations before their removal from the United States.