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The Supreme Court has ordered a pause on the deportation of Venezuelan migrants being held in Texas, whom the Trump administration is seeking to remove under an 18th century wartime law.
In a brief order issued early Saturday, the court directed the federal government to halt deportation proceedings for a group of men that the government alleges are members of the Tren de Aragua gang “until further order of this court.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
It is the second time that Trump’s use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act has landed before the Supreme Court. The administration has deported scores of migrants it accuses of being gang members under the law, many of whom were sent to El Salvador with little to no due process.
On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency appeal at several courts, including the Supreme Court, saying that “dozens or hundreds” of men at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Texas were at imminent risk of being removed from the U.S. “without notice or an opportunity to be heard.” Many of the men had been “loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport,” the ACLU said in its appeal, having been told that they could be removed from the U.S. as soon as that afternoon or Saturday.
That effort, the organization’s attorneys said, was “in direct contravention” of the court’s April 7 ruling that allowed the administration to remove alleged gang members under the Alien Enemies Act — but only if they are given due process.