[This story first aired April 22, 2025]
Three foreign men have been arrested in northern Montana for either illegal entry or reentry into the country. Border Patrol agents claimed those men held gang affiliations, but defense attorneys say there’s no proof of that and criminal cases against two of them men were dismissed. MTPR's Elinor Smith sat down with Montana Free Press’ Matt Hudson to break down the details of the case.
Elinor Smith: Matt, thank you so much for being here today.
Matt Hudson: Glad to be here, thank you.
Elinor Smith: Of course. So to start out, can you explain who the key players in this case are?
Matt Hudson: Yeah, so back in March, U.S. Border Patrol, Customs and Border Patrol, arrested three men in Shelby. Two of them are from Venezuela, and the third man is from Honduras.
Prosecutors charged those men for illegally entering the country at the Southern Border. Border patrol's Havre sector then posted about their arrest to Facebook. And they said that these men had all been identified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which hails from Venezuela and has been in the news lately.
That allegation of gang membership, it just hasn't appeared anywhere else. Hasn't appeared in charging documents or in press releases about the case where you might see additional details about these defendants. I spoke to three defense attorneys in the case and all of them said that they've seen no evidence that suggests any sort of gang affiliation.
Elinor Smith: This is all taking place during some major shifts to immigration policies across the country. How have those changes shaped this case?
Matt Hudson: Yeah, during Donald Trump's presidential campaign, he made it very clear that he intended to carry out these large scale deportations. And we saw the most prominent example of that last month when there was the deportation of more than 200 men to a prison in El Salvador.
There's a New York Times investigation that came out recently that found that, you know, some of the men, a few dozen of them, maybe, had committed serious crimes or had been accused of some very serious offenses. Others had records with, you know, smaller offenses, traffic infractions, things like that.
And then, many others had really no criminal background to speak of other than being unauthorized to be in the country. And I think the broader concern there is around the lack of due process that is happening in this sort of immigration enforcement under the Alien Enemies Act, and whether or not these men should have had their ability to defend those deportations in court.
Elinor Smith: You brought up the Alien Enemies Act. Could you explain what that act is and what it does?
Matt Hudson: Yeah, the Alien Enemies Act, I think it has its roots back in the 1700s I believe in the United States. It was last used during World War II. But in March, President Trump signed an executive order that names Tren de Aragua as an invading force of the United States, and that under the Alien Enemies Act, the Administration wanted to carry out deportations of what they viewed were dangerous gang members that needed to be taken out of the country.
And so these deportations happened quickly. They happened without court hearings or asylum reviews that we might see in other immigration cases. And so as a result of that, there's also been a lot of scrutiny around how authorities determined who is affiliated with a gang, and what evidence there is to support those allegations.
Elinor Smith: The Supreme Court has issued a couple of orders regarding deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. How could those orders influence the future of these deportations?
Matt Hudson: Yeah, so organizations quickly sued to block some of these deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. And in one case we all might recall, a federal judge ordered a plane bound for El Salvador to turn around, which did not happen.
But the Supreme Court followed up with a narrow ruling in April that overturned that federal judge's order. More recently, over this past weekend, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered Donald Trump and his Administration to halt the deportation of a smaller group of Venezuelan migrants while they appeal their cases in a lower federal court in Texas.
Elinor Smith: So looping back to the three men who have been arrested on immigration violations in Montana earlier this year, what does all of this mean for them?
Matt Hudson: Yeah, the gang allegation could prove crucial because they're kind of moving through two systems. There's the court system and the charges that they face there, and then there is the sort of immigration process that they will also have to go through.
So, the two men whose cases were dismissed, they still face that immigration process, and they're going to be placed in ICE custody for potential deportation. And when I spoke to their attorneys, they didn't know where these people would end up.
So they didn't know whether they would be sent back to their home countries, whether it would be a prison in El Salvador or some other outcome. And that's where the gang accusation becomes important, because if immigration authorities determine that these people are affiliated with Tren de Aragua they could face one of those expedited deportation processes that we spoke about.
The defense attorney for the man who was in court this morning, he actually made a statement at the plea hearing that he has seen no evidence of gang affiliation or gang activity in any of the discovery in the case. He said he made that statement on the record for his client's protection. And he also wasn't clear what the immigration process will look like for his client. And once that man is sentenced, he will also be in ICE custody for immigration processing. And again, it's not sure what will happen in that process. But, I learned that the man hopes that he'll be sent back to Honduras where he has family.
Elinor Smith: Well, Matt, thank you so much for being here today. I appreciate it and I hope you'll come back and keep us updated as the situation evolves.
Matt Hudson: Absolutely, anytime.
