Donald Trump’s administration is moving forward with more expedited deportations under the Alien Enemies Act—despite a Supreme Court ruling that requires it to provide advance notice and a court hearing.
In a new filing Friday, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union claimed that “dozens” of Venezuelan men held at the Bluebonnet Immigration and Customs Enforcement Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, had received forms to expedite their removal from the United States under the AEA.
In a declaration, Attorney Karene Brown said that her client at Bluebonnet, who has a pending asylum claim and no removal order, had been approached by ICE agents Thursday and asked to sign a form that was only available in English.
Brown’s client only speaks Spanish, and he refused to sign the form. ICE agents informed him that the form was “coming from the president, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it.”
An English-speaking Venezuelan man told her client that the form was a notice that he had been designated as a member of Tren de Aragua, and that he “must be removed” from the United States. He told her client that ICE had said he would be deported either Thursday or Friday to Venezuela.
Another man, Luis Yoender Mercado, who had a hearing scheduled for April 23, received a similar notice. He was told by ICE agents that he would be removed to El Salvador, according to a declaration from Michelle Brané, the executive director of an immigration nonprofit organization, who spoke directly with Mercado’s sister.
Brané said she had received messages from several people indicating that individuals at Bluebonnet were given notices that they were about to be removed.
In another declaration, attorney Travis John Collins said that his client at Bluebonnet had been “taken away” by ICE agents Thursday night, after being transferred to the facility earlier this week. Collin’s client’s father, who was also moved to Bluebonnet, saw his son through a window, who was crying as he held up a piece of paper.
“Another detainee who spoke English was able to read that the paper said, ‘Deportation.’ The country of removal was not visible,” Collins said. “Because he has no final immigration order, the government could only be seeking to remove him under the AEA, not the immigration laws.”
The ACLU’s filing stated that Brown’s client, “like other men against whom the Alien Enemies Act has already been used, does not have a final order of removal and is therefore not removable under the immigration laws.”
“There is no indication that, as with past AEA removals, lawyers were being provided with the form or told that their clients were being designated under the AEA,” the ACLU’s filing stated.
The ACLU asked the court to “certify a class” and grant a broader restraining order to prevent the removal of multiple individuals under the AEA.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled that while the Trump administration could continue deportations under the AEA, it needed to provide detainees with the opportunity to file habeas corpus challenges, a complex and rarely successful legal procedure. The court also ruled that these needed to be filed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a MAGA-aligned court in Texas where the deportation flights are staged.
But crucially, detainees must be given the opportunity to “actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the high court ruled. It seems the Trump administration is once again ignoring the order.
Members of the Trump administration have continued to insist that the Supreme Court’s ruling doesn’t actually require them to give due process to detainees.
Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor emphasized this crucial point in her dissent, writing that “the government cannot usher any detainees, including plaintiffs, onto planes in a shroud of secrecy, as it did on March 15, 2025,” and that it could not “immediately resume removing individuals without notice.”
“To the extent the Government removes even one individual without affording him notice and a meaningful opportunity to file and pursue habeas relief, it does so in direct contravention of an edict by the United States Supreme Court,” she wrote.
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