US Supreme Court lets Trump pursue deportations under 1798 ‘enemy alien’ law, with limits
Dissenting justices say decision rewards administration for defying court order and sending planeloads of alleged Venezuelan gang members to notorious El Salvador prison
WASHINGTON — The US Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to use an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants as part of the Republican president’s hardline approach to immigration, but said they must get a court hearing before they are taken from the United States.
In a divided decision, the court said the administration must give Venezuelans whom it claims are gang members “reasonable time” to go to court.
But the court’s conservative majority said the legal challenges must take place in Texas, instead of in a Washington courtroom.
The ruling appears to bar the administration from immediately resuming the flights that last month carried hundreds of migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The flights came soon after US President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportations under a presidential proclamation calling the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force.
The law, which was passed in 1798, is best known for its use to intern Japanese, Italian and German immigrants during World War Two.
The majority said nothing about those flights, which took off without providing the hearing the justices now say is necessary.
In dissent, the three liberal justices said the administration has sought to avoid judicial review in this case and the court “now rewards the government for its behavior.” Conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, whom Trump nominated during his first term as president, joined portions of the dissent.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it would be harder for people to challenge deportations individually, wherever they are being held, and noted that the administration has also said in another case before the court that it’s unable to return people who have been deported to the El Salvador prison by mistake.
“We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this,” she wrote.
The justices acted on the administration’s emergency appeal after the federal appeals court in Washington left in place an order temporarily prohibiting deportations of the migrants accused of being gang members under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act.
“For all the rhetoric of the dissents,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion, the high court order confirms “that the detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.”
The case has become a flashpoint amid escalating tension between the White House and the federal courts. It’s the second time in less than a week that a majority of conservative justices has handed Trump at least a partial victory in an emergency appeal after lower courts had blocked parts of his agenda.
Several other cases are pending, including over Trump’s plan to deny citizenship to US-born children of parents who are in the country illegally.
Trump praised the court for its action Monday.
“The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself. A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.
The original order blocking the deportations to El Salvador was issued by US District Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge at the federal courthouse in Washington.
Attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan noncitizens who were being held in Texas, hours after the proclamation was made public and as immigration authorities were shepherding hundreds of migrants to waiting airplanes.
ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt said the “critical point” of the high court’s ruling was that people must be allowed due process to challenge their removal. “That is an important victory,” he said.
Boasberg imposed a temporary halt on deportations and also ordered planeloads of Venezuelan immigrants to return to the US. That did not happen. The judge held a hearing last week over whether the government defied his order to turn the planes around. The administration has invoked a “state secrets privilege ” and refused to give Boasberg any additional information about the deportations.
Trump and his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg. In a rare statement, Chief Justice John Roberts said “impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”
The Times of Israel Community.