The supreme court has rejected the Trump administration’s request to remove a temporary block on deportations of Venezuelans under a rarely used 18th-century wartime law.
Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The court, which returned the case to a federal appeals court, had already imposed a temporary halt on deportations from a north Texas detention facility in a middle-of-the-night order issued last month.
Justice Samuel Alito wrote the dissent, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas.
Donald Trump responded on social media, with a post that claimed: “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!”
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do,” Trump added in a subsequent post, in which he also claimed, falsely, that the justices “ruled that the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even those who are mentally insane, who came into our Country illegally, are not allowed to be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process, one that will take, possibly, many years for each person.”
The case is among several making their way through the courts over the president’s proclamation in March calling the Tren de Aragua gang a foreign terrorist organization engaged in an “invasion of the United States”, and as such subject to deportation under the 1798 statute. However, a recently declassified memo showed US intelligence agencies rejected a key claim the administration made to justify invoking the wartime law – that Venezuela’s government was orchestrating the gang’s operations.
The supreme court case stems from a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and the ACLU of Texas, challenging Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act. At issue is whether people must have the opportunity to contest their removal from the United States, without determining whether Trump’s invocation of the law was appropriate.
“We recognize the significance of the government’s national security interests as well as the necessity that such interests be pursued in a manner consistent with the constitution,” the justices said in an unsigned opinion.
In a statement, Lee Gelernt, the deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel, said: “The court’s decision to stay removals is a powerful rebuke to the government’s attempt to hurry people away to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador. The use of a wartime authority during peacetime, without even affording due process, raises issues of profound importance.”
At least three federal judges have said Trump was improperly using the AEA to speed deportations of people the administration says are Venezuelan gang members.
On Tuesday, a judge in Pennsylvania signed off on the use of the law.
The court-by-court approach to deportations under the AEA flows from another supreme court order that took a case away from a judge in Washington DC and ruled detainees seeking to challenge their deportations must do so where they are held.
The justices said in April that people must be given “reasonable time” to file a challenge.
The court has rejected the 12 hours the administration has said would be sufficient, but has not otherwise spelled out how long it meant.
The US district judge Stephanie Haines ordered immigration officials to give people 21 days in her opinion in which she otherwise said deportations could legally take place under the AEA.
In its opinion, the supreme court pointed to the case of Kilmar Ábrego García, a Maryland resident the administration admitted it wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador as a result of an “administrative error”. The president and other high-ranking administration officials have repeatedly said Ábrego García would never be allowed back in the US, despite a supreme court order instructing the government to “facilitate” his return.
Highlighting the administration’s argument that it was “unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador”, the court concluded that the “detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty”.
“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process right to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the justices wrote.
However, the court also made clear that it was not blocking other ways the government may deport people.
The decision comes one day after the court appeared troubled by an executive order Trump signed on his first day in office that seeks to end birthright citizenship, which contradicts precedent upholding the plain text of the 14th amendment as granting citizenship to “all persons born or naturalized in the United States”.
