The Supreme Court will continue blocking Donald Trump’s administration from summarily deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members from the United States after the government rushed to try to remove immigrants from the country without adequate due process last month.
“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 justices wrote Friday.
The 7-2 decision — with conservative justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting — argues targeted immigrants detained in Texas under the president’s use of the wartime Alien Enemies Act must have “sufficient time and information to reasonably be able to contact counsel, file a petition, and pursue appropriate relief.”
Nearly two months after deporting dozens of Venezuelans to a notorious Salvadoran prison, the Trump administration is embroiled in courtroom battles across the country — and at the nation’s highest court — following challenges to the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport alleged Tren de Aragua gang members.
The Supreme Court has previously issued two orders stemming from those cases. Justices agreed that the president could rely on the centuries-old wartime law to remove immigrants from the country — provided they first have an opportunity to challenge those claims in court — and then temporarily blocked the government from deporting another group of Venezuelans in Texas while their lawyers scrambled to challenge the allegations against them.
In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump stated that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”
But the administration has admitted that “many” of the 137 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador in March did not have criminal records, and attorneys and family members say their clients and relatives — some of whom were in the country with legal permission and have upcoming court hearings on their asylum claims — have nothing to do with Tren de Aragua.
This is a developing story
