Supreme Court Checks Trump’s Deportation Orders Under Alien Enemies Act for Venezuelans

In a theatrical court loss for President Donald Trump, the U.S. Supreme Court has temporarily suspended his administration’s highly disputed attempt to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants in north Texas under the nearly obsolete 1798 Alien Enemies Act. It is welcome news to immigrant rights activists and a stiff blow to Trump’s overall agenda to expand executive authority over immigration enforcement.

The high court ruling, handed down on Friday, puts on hold a scheduled deportation of Venezuelan detainees pending wider constitutional and legal issues about the enforcement of the Alien Enemies Act being decided in federal courts. The temporary stay forbids the Trump administration from bypassing ordinary due process protections that otherwise would be afforded to migrants who are subjected to deportation proceedings.

A Revival of a Centuries-Old Law

Trump’s government had tried to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a World War-era statute enacted in the late 18th century, as statutory authority for accelerated removals. The statute allows the president to imprison or deport individuals from countries with which the U.S. is at war. Trump lawyers argued that Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was so threatening that summary deportation under this act was justified.

In March, the government acted expeditiously to start deportations, deporting a small cluster of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador. Human rights organizations contended that the action breached core due process safeguards, as numerous migrants received little or no notice sometimes just 24 hours’ notice of deportation. Those notices themselves routinely were too frequently devoid of key legal information, so recipients were unable to challenge their removal.

Justices Resist Government Overreach

The Supreme Court upheld the administration’s proposal did not satisfy legal safeguards required. While the unsigned opinion distributed a blistering analysis of the manner in which the Trump administration attempted to bypass legal review processes, the Court made it clear deportations should not happen without appropriate procedural safeguards, particularly following past errors, such as wrongfully deporting Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

The Court acknowledged the “especially heavy” interests of the detainees, which would be irrevocably damaged by wrongful deportation. It also condemned the expeditious notice system, noting that the 24-hour notices issued lacked specific instructions on how to trigger habeas corpus rights or contest deportations.

The justices ordered the case to go back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans to consider more seriously underlying constitutional issues that have been the focus of heated debate. That decision, legal experts argue, will extend the legal shadow over Trump’s immigration policy and potentially postpone further deportations for months.

Dissent by Conservative Justices

Most significantly, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Alito, whose 14-page dissent was joined by Thomas, contended that the Court had overstepped its bounds in its power by entering too early into the matter and by basically telling lower courts how to decide. He reproached the Court for exercising its jurisdiction improperly and reproached it for “plucking” a case from a district court before it had even had a chance to go through its proper life.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh, concurring with the temporary halt in the deportations, opined that the Court extend to resolve the entire extent of the legal complaint. He advocated for the use of an expedited review process to definitively settle the case and was worried about dalliance with definiteness in this milestone case.

Legal Chaos Across the Courts

The Supreme Court move follows that several federal district courts across the nation have been trying to come to terms with Trump’s application of the Alien Enemies Act. Federal courts in Texas, Colorado, and Nevada have all already approved temporary injunctions halting the law from taking effect. Judges in a number of the districts have even gone ahead to declare Trump’s application of the act as unconstitutional.

One of Trump’s judges in Southern Texas held on May 2 that the president’s invoking of the Alien Enemies Act to expel Venezuelan nationals was unconstitutional. Uncertainty had remained, though, regarding the geographic scope of lower court injunctions. Injunctions against deportations applied only in certain areas, giving the Trump administration space to operate against migrants in northern Texas where protections had not been established yet.

This patchwork legal system saw rapid filings by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which is representing a group of immigrants, two of whom were detained in the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas. They received deportation notices to respond within a few hours. The ACLU contends this was a gross contradiction of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision that deportation notices need to give detainees time to pursue legal recourse.

The Court’s ruling essentially puts on hold all deportations under the Alien Enemies Act until additional direction from the 5th Circuit becomes available. To the degree that the litigation continues, the ultimate destiny of Trump’s policy is by no means settled. Immigrant activists view the decision as a partial but temporary triumph in the bigger fight over due process and executive discretion.

Trump reacted to the ruling by tweeting that the Supreme Court was preventing him from “getting criminals out of our country.” The ruling of the Court does not uphold the policy as unconstitutional in itself; rather, it maintains the call for judicial review and adequate notice before deportation proceedings may go on.

Legal analysts note that the tongue-lashing of the Supreme Court could have long-term implications for future administrations’ reliance on emergency immigration power. The Alien Enemies Act still exists on the books but its invocation in today’s immigration enforcement may now face a much more formidable obstacle to be overcome.

As the country waits to see how the courts resolve how the balance between national security and civil liberties is to be drawn, theuproar over Trump’s immigration policy is just beginning. Meanwhile, in the near term, the Venezuelan migrants caught up in this storm in the courts have been temporarily spared-but the political and legal repercussions are still unfolding.