Supreme Court maintains block on some Trump deportations of migrants
The justices did not address the broader question about whether Trump officials can legally invoke the Alien Enemies Act to target alleged gang members.
The Supreme Court on Friday kept a block on the Trump administration’s use of a rarely invoked wartime power to deport migrants in Northern Texas and said administration officials had not given those targeted for removal last month sufficient time to challenge their deportations.
The justices called the detainees’ interests “particularly weighty” because of the risk of removal to a notorious megaprison in El Salvador where the migrants could face indefinite detention.
President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target a Venezuelan gang is one of the most controversial parts of his mass deportation efforts, which are at the center of increasingly tense standoffs between his administration and the courts.
Trump responded angrily to the Friday order in a post on Truth Social, writing “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!”
The justices had told the administration in early April that it must give targeted detainees sufficient notice “within a reasonable time and in such a manner” that they can challenge their removal in the jurisdictions where they are being held. The high court intervened again a week later, issuing an extraordinary middle-of-the-night order to temporarily halt deportations of a group of migrants in Northern Texas. Lawyers for those migrants said they had been loaded onto buses and were at risk of imminent removal to El Salvador.
In their order Friday, the justices seemed to send the message that they meant what they said the first time. Using stronger language, they emphasized the importance of courts ensuring a fair or due process before deportation and twice alluded to the Trump administration’s handling of Kilmar Abrego García, the Maryland man wrongly deported and now imprisoned in El Salvador despite a 2019 court order barring such action.
“A detainee must have sufficient time and information to reasonably be able to contact counsel, file a petition, and pursue appropriate relief,” according to the order from a majority of justices.
The roughly 24 hours notice provided to the detainees in Northern Texas “devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the order states.
Conservative Justices Samuel A. Alito Jr. and Clarence Thomas dissented, accusing their colleagues of departing from the court’s usual practice.
The Supreme Court made clear it was not addressing the broader question about whether Trump officials can legally invoke the wartime statute to target alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang. Instead, they sent the case back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit for further proceedings.
“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,” according to the unsigned order presumably joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
In a concurring statement, Kavanaugh said the Supreme Court’s injunction “simply ensures that the Judiciary can decide whether these Venezuelan detainees may be lawfully removed under the Alien Enemies Act before they are in fact removed.”
Kavanaugh said he would have preferred to have the Supreme Court take up the underlying legal questions and called for a “prompt and final resolution” of the matter.
Lower courts have largely rejected the administration’s rationale for fast-track deportations. Judges in Colorado, New York and Texas have all concluded that it was unlawful for Trump to invoke the Alien Enemies Act and rejected the administration’s declarations that the United States is being invaded by the Venezuelan gang to justify its use of the centuries-old act to try to deport migrants without a hearing. The judges have barred or temporarily paused such deportations in their districts.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania has allowed the administration to invoke the wartime law but described the administration’s process for carrying out those removals as “constitutionally deficient” and ordered the government to give targeted migrants at least 21 days’ notice and opportunity to challenge their removals.
The White House has defended Trump’s use of the statute, which has been used three times previously, during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. It allows the president to skip the usual immigration court process to detain and deport anyone age 14 or older from a “hostile nation or government” when “there is a declared war” with such nation or when a “foreign nation” threatens “invasion or predatory incursion” against the United States.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which is representing some of the targeted migrants, had told the justices the Trump administration’s notice of deportation did not comply with the initial April 7 Supreme Court order because it is written in English, not Spanish, and gave the detainees just 24 hours to appeal.
The organization asked the court to ensure at least 30 days notice and provide clear direction to lower courts about how to handle these cases.
A court filing on April 23 showed that the government is giving migrants 12 hours to indicate if they want to challenge their deportations under the Alien Enemies Act — an amount of time their lawyers said falls short of the meaningful opportunity the Supreme Court initially outlined.
In response to the court’s order Friday, attorney Lee Gelernt of the ACLU said in a statement the Supreme Court “properly put a hold on the extraordinary use of a wartime authority until it could fully consider the matter. This will mean, for now, that no more individuals will be whisked away to a brutal foreign prison, perhaps for the rest of their lives.”
The eight-page order provided new insights into the information the justices had when they initially blocked the deportations in Northern Texas just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, April 19. It also showed how the administration’s approach to the separate immigration case involving Abrego García seems to have shaped the view of at least some justices of the administration’s broader deportation efforts.
In April, the Supreme Court directed Trump officials to take steps to return Abrego García, whose attorneys say he is at risk of harm or death in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center. But Trump officials have said publicly that he is not coming back to the United States. Administration lawyers have repeatedly resisted directives from a lower-court judge in Maryland and invoked the state secrets privilege to withhold information about Abrego García’s possible return.
The administration’s assertions in that case factored into the majority’s order on Friday, which said the justices had learned after their initial order that the government was apparently poised to imminently carry out deportations in Northern Texas and that the migrants had been transported to an airport.
“Had the detainees been removed from the United States to the custody of a foreign sovereign on April 19, the Government may have argued, as it has previously argued, that no U.S. court had jurisdiction to order relief,” the order states with a reference to Abrego García’s case, noting later that the government has also "represented elsewhere that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador.”
While Trump officials are blocked from fast-tracking deportations in Northern Texas, the justices said the Trump administration could continue to deport alleged gang members using other immigration laws.
In response, Trump complained in a social media post that the alternative legal routes are too lengthy and expensive and said the Supreme Court is “not allowing me to do what I was elected to do.”
Marianne LeVine contributed to this report.
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