2 weeks ago
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The Supreme Court on Friday blocked the Trump Administration from using a wartime law to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, delivering yet another legal setback to President Donald Trump’s controversial deportation plans.
The 7-2 ruling extends the court’s April emergency order barring Trump from using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport migrants held in a Texas detention facility, after lawyers said the detainees were being put on buses towards an airport without a chance to challenge the decision via habeas corpus petitions.
In its unsigned order on Friday, the Justices faulted the Trump Administration for only giving detained migrants 24 hours to raise legal objections: "Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster," the ruling said.
The Justices, however, sent the case back to an appeals court to determine what due process the detainees should receive, if Trump’s deportation plan is legal, and how much notice the migrants should receive.
Only two of the court’s Justices—Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas—publicly noted their dissent. Alito wrote that the Supreme Court had “no authority to issue any relief."
The Supreme Court did not weigh in on the underlying question of whether the Trump Administration can deport people under the , a rarely used 18th century wartime law that the Administration has cited in its deportations of Venezuelans it alleges are members of the gang Tren de Aragua. The Alien Enemies Act can only be used during “invasions or predatory incursions,” but the government has argued that the gang is mounting an incursion into the U.S. and that it’s closely linked to the Venezuelan government.
