The Supreme Court ruled Friday that lower courts must give migrants more time to challenge their potential removal under a centuries-old wartime law, as part of the legal dispute over President Donald Trump’s high-profile deportation effort.
The justices previously had ruled that migrants that the government sought to deport under the Alien Enemies Act must have an opportunity to contest their removals at the court with jurisdiction over where they are held. That led to several lawsuits filed in different federal courts.
Friday’s unsigned order stemmed from one of those cases in Texas, after the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency application that said the government’s “lightning-fast timeline” did not giving the migrants “a realistic opportunity to contest their removal.”
The justices ruled the federal government had to provide more than 24 hours’ notice for immigrants that the government intended to deport them under the law — but they did not define what timeline must be followed.
The Supreme Court sent the case, which was filed on behalf of a group of migrants detained as part of enforcement of a presidential proclamation invoking the 1798 law, back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to decide the process for immigrants to contest their removals.
Part of the court’s reasoning was the Trump administration has represented in another case that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported
in error to a prison in El Salvador, “where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention.”
“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 order states.
The justices had issued a temporary pause on removals in the case. Trump has repeatedly chafed at court orders preventing him from removing immigrants from the country without the opportunity to challenge their deportations.
“Our Court System is not letting me do the job I was Elected to do. Activist judges must let the Trump Administration deport murderers, and other criminals who have come into our Country illegally, WITHOUT DELAY!!!” Trump posted on his social media site Truth Social last week.
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., in a dissent joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, argued that the Supreme Court had no power to weigh in and the lower court properly found there was no emergency to act on.
Alito argued that the immigrants challenging their detention should not be allowed to sue as a group.
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