Deported migrants must have right to challenge:US judge

Hundreds of Venezuelans deported from the US to El Salvador under an 18th century wartime law must be given the chance to challenge their detentions, and the Trump administration must facilitate the legal challenges, a judge has ruled.

US District Judge James Boasberg stopped short of expressly ordering the Trump administration to bring the hundreds of Venezuelan migrants being held in a mega-prison in El Salvador back to the United States.

The judge gave the Trump administration one week to detail how it would facilitate the deportees' filing of legal challenges.

In his ruling, Boasberg wrote that the individuals were deported without adequate notice or the right to contest their removals.

"That process - which was improperly withheld - must now be afforded to them," Boasberg wrote.

The Venezuelans were deported in March after President Donald Trump, a Republican, invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang without going through normal immigration procedures.

Family members of many of the Venezuelans and their lawyers deny the migrants had any gang ties, and say they were not given a chance to contest the Trump administration's allegations in court.

The Trump administration is paying El Salvador's government $6 million to hold them.

The ruling by Boasberg, an appointee of Democratic President Barack Obama, is the latest judicial ruling against Trump's aggressive immigration policy. But the Republican president has also scored major wins from the US Supreme Court, which has backed his hardline approach in some cases while also signalling some reservations with how he is carrying out his agenda.

Trump, who has accused federal judges of stifling his agenda, called for Boasberg's impeachment after the judge in March granted a request by lawyers for the Venezuelan migrants to temporarily block their deportations.

Trump's comment prompted a rebuke from US Chief Justice John Roberts, who said appeals, not impeachments, were the proper way to handle disagreements with judicial rulings.

Meanwhile a federal judge has ordered the US government to immediately halt deportation proceedings against the wife and five children of a man charged over a firebombing attack in Boulder, Colorado.

US District Judge Gordon P Gallagher granted a request from the family of Mohamed Sabry Soliman to block their deportation, after US immigration officials took them into federal custody on Tuesday.

"The court finds that deportation without process could work irreparable harm and an order must issue without notice due to the urgency this situation presents," Gallagher wrote in the order.

The family members have not been charged in the attack on a group demonstrating for the release of Israeli hostages in Gaza.

Soliman, 45, has been charged with a federal hate crime and state counts of attempted murder in the Sunday attack in downtown Boulder.

"It is patently unlawful to punish individuals for the crimes of their relatives," attorneys for the family wrote in the lawsuit.

Soliman's wife, 18-year-old daughter, two minor sons and two minor daughters all are Egyptian citizens.

"We are investigating to what extent his family knew about this heinous attack, if they had knowledge of it, or if they provided support to it," US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a statement.

And a Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico despite fearing persecution there was flown back to the United States on Wednesday after a judge ordered the US government to facilitate his return.