SCOTUS and Alien Enemies Act

Post Reply New Topic

The Supreme Court on Monday threw out the order of a federal judge who had blocked the removal of men alleged to be members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to El Salvador without any legal process under the Alien Enemies Act.

The 5-4 ruling essentially clears the path for the Trump administration to resume deportations under the rarely used wartime law, so long as detainees are given due process. That means they must be given time to challenge their detentions and make the administration prove the legality of their confinements.

“AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the court wrote in its majority opinion.

The decision lifts orders issued by Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who blocked the move on March 15, while litigation continues. The original lawsuit was filed by five Venezuelans, with Boasberg provisionally certifying it as a class action that applies to all Venezuelans in U.S. custody who are not U.S. citizens.

So far, Boasberg had issued only a temporary restraining order. He had also scheduled a hearing for Tuesday to decide whether to impose a longer-term preliminary injunction.

Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent: “The Government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.”

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke to the historic nature of the ruling’s being issued Monday before Boasberg has even held a hearing on a preliminary injunction.

“With more and more of our most significant rulings taking place in the shadows of our emergency docket, today’s Court leaves less and less of a trace. But make no mistake: We are just as wrong now as we have been in the past, with similarly devastating consequences. It just seems we are now less willing to face it,” she wrote.

"At least when the Court went off base in the past, it left a record so posterity could see how it went wrong,” she added, citing the notorious ruling that allowed government confinement of Japanese Americans during World War II.

The government previously indicated in court that if Boasberg's order was lifted, it would immediately begin deportations. On March 26, a federal appeals court voted 2-1 to decline an earlier request to block Boasberg's decision.

The fast-moving case concerns Trump's aggressive and unprecedented use of presidential power in invoking an 18th century law called the Alien Enemies Act, which has been used only when the country was at war.

"This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country," acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in her request. "The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the president."

The Trump administration announced in February that it had determined that Tren de Aragua was a terrorist organization and that its members had infiltrated the United States. The administration, in a move that has been contested, says the group is effectively an arm of the Venezuelan government, which is led by President Nicolás Maduro.

Trump then invoked the Alien Enemies Act, which can be used only when there are "invasions of predatory incursions."

By making those findings, the Trump administration concluded that Tren de Aragua members could be immediately detained and deported without an opportunity for judges to determine whether the Alien Enemies Act applied or whether the people involved were even members of the gang. Lawyers for the plaintiffs say the government's points-based method for identifying whether people are members is seriously flawed, relying in part on whether they have tattoos, leading in some cases to non-gang members’ being targeted.

The administration has argued that the Alien Enemies Act gives the president almost unfettered power to remove designated immigrants at short notice despite the constitutional protection of due process.

A key issue in the case, therefore, is whether courts have any role to play in assessing whether the law is being lawfully applied.

The government argues that the only way detainees can challenge potential deportation is to file separate habeas corpus claims in the jurisdictions where they are held.

The Venezuelan plaintiffs argued in their own filing that the implications of the government's argument are "staggering" because it could allow officials to target a disfavored immigrant group on a whim.

A decision for the government would "allow the government to immediately begin whisking away anyone else it unilaterally declares to be a member of a criminal gang to a brutal foreign prison," they said.

They also noted that Boasberg's decision did not require any currently detained immigrants to be released or prevent deportations under different legal authorities. In fact, the Trump administration has continued to deport other immigrants to El Salvador.

Boasberg's intervention prompted a barrage of hostile commentary from Trump and his allies, with Trump and others calling for the Boasberg to be impeached. That prompted a swift rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.

Concerns were also raised about whether the administration had violated a verbal order from Boasberg in court that planes carrying alleged gang members turn around and return to the United States. Two flights subsequently landed in Honduras and El Salvador.

The Supreme Court in the early hours of Saturday told the Trump administration not to take any action to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members currently based in Texas while litigation continues.

The court did not grant or deny an application filed by lawyers for the detainees, but effectively hit pause on the case, which affects people currently held within the jurisdiction of the Northern District of Texas.

"The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court," the brief order said. It noted that an appeals court has yet to act on a similar request.

Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, disagreed with the decision, the order noted.

On Friday afternoon, at least one charter bus rolled up to the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, a town about 200 miles west of Dallas, where the men are being held.

Administration officials are seeking to deport the men, who they say are members of the Tren de Aragua gang, under a wartime law called the Alien Enemies Act. There are major questions about whether the government has the authority to apply the law to gang members outside of a war situation.

The plaintiffs “ask only that this court preserve the status quo so that proposed class members will not be sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador before the American judicial system can afford them due process,” their lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in the Supreme Court filing.

In the court order, the justices said that the government should file a response to the ACLU application at the Supreme Court "as soon as possible" once the appeals court has acted.

The Supreme Court on Friday dealt a blow against the Trump administration's attempt to send Venezuelans it says are gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador, saying the detainees must have a proper chance to raise legal objections.

The 7-2 decision, which grants a request from a group of Venezuelans, clarified an unusual order issued by the justices in the early hours of April 19 that hit pause on any government plans to deport people held in northern Texas.

The justices in the latest unsigned decision faulted the administration for giving the detainees only 24 hours to launch legal challenges.

"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.

But the court concluded that the justices themselves, "far removed from the circumstances on the ground," are not best placed to determine exactly what process should be followed.

Therefore, the court sent the case back to an appeals court for further proceedings to determine what due process the detainees should receive.

The litigation hinges on the Trump administration’s attempt to use the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans who officials allege are members of a gang called Tren de Aragua.

Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union — which is litigating the case — praised the court's decision.

“The Court correctly put a pause on the extraordinary use of a wartime authority until it could fully consider the case. For now, this means that no more individuals can be hurried away to a brutal foreign prison, perhaps incommunicado for the rest of their lives,” Gelernt said in a statement.

Trump condemned the ruling in a post on Truth Social, writing in all caps, "The Supreme Court won't allow us to get criminals out of our country!"

In a subsequent post, Trump said that the high court's decision "will let more CRIMINALS pour into our Country, doing great harm to our cherished American public."

The Supreme Court on Monday gave the Trump administration the green light to revoke special legal protections for thousands of Venezuelan immigrants.

The high court granted an emergency application filed by the administration, meaning officials can move forward with reversing a decision made at the tail end of the Biden administration to extend protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelans under the federal Temporary Protected Status program.