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 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.
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.”
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 sent the case back to an appeals court to determine what due process the detainees should receive, as well as whether Trump’s deportation plan is legal, and how much notice the migrants are required to get.
Soon after the Court issued its ruling, Trump expressed his disagreement on social media. “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he wrote.
The Court did not weigh in on the underlying question of whether the Trump Administration can deport people under the Alien Enemies Act, 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.
Legal scholars and immigration activists have admonished the Trump Administration’s efforts to deport migrants without giving them a chance to contest claims that they are gang members, including the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man the government mistakenly deported to El Salvador. The Supreme Court noted in its ruling that the Trump Administration has claimed it can not bring Abrego Garcia back even though it ruled that the government must “facilitate” his return, suggesting that “the detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty.” Trump has undermined that claim, saying in an ABC News interview last month that he could retrieve Garcia but was refusing to do so.
Many of the legal cases involving the Alien Enemies Act are brought under writs of habeas corpus—the right of detainees to challenge the legality of their detention. But the Trump Administration has said that it was “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus, citing a provision of the Constitution that allows it to be suspended “in cases of rebellion or invasion.”
Just before Friday’s ruling, Trump lambasted the Supreme Court on social media, despite it having three Justices that he appointed: “THE SUPREME COURT IS BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS, WHO HAVE NO SUPPORT, THE PUBLIC HATES THEM, AND THEIR ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF,” the President wrote. “WE CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY!”
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