Posted on 04/20/25
| News Source: Politico
The Supreme Court blocked the Trump administration from deporting a second wave of Venezuelan immigrants under the Alien Enemies Act after lawyers rushed to the court and alleged that the administration was about to send dozens or hundreds of detainees to El Salvador in defiance of an earlier ruling by the justices.
In a brief order released at about 1 a.m. Saturday, the court directed the administration to temporarily halt any plan to deport a group of Venezuelan nationals who have been detained in northern Texas and have been designated as “alien enemies.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented. Alito indicated he would issue a fuller statement later.
The high court’s order followed hours of frantic litigation involving courts in Texas, Louisiana and Washington, D.C., as lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union battled to stave off what they said appeared to be imminent deportations of Venezuelan men the administration has gathered at an immigration detention center just north of Abilene, Texas.
The men had been given terse deportation notices and were being “loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport,” the ACLU lawyers wrote in an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on Friday evening.
President Donald Trump has deployed the Alien Enemies Act — a war power last invoked during World War II — to summarily deport foreign nationals he has labeled members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which Trump has designated a terrorist organization. Last month, in the first wave of deportations under the act, he sent more than 130 Venezuelan men to a notorious prison in El Salvador with little or no due process.
In an April 7 ruling, the justices said that anyone labeled an “alien enemy” by the Trump administration must be given notice and a meaningful opportunity to contest their deportation in court. ACLU lawyers wrote on Friday that, by preparing a fresh wave of rapid deportations, the administration was defying the Supreme Court’s command in its earlier ruling.
At an emergency hearing Friday evening before U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, a Justice Department lawyer said he had spoken with Homeland Security officials and was told that they were “not aware of any current plans” for deportations Saturday.
But the lawyer, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign, added: “I’ve also been told to say they reserve the right to remove people tomorrow.” Notably, Ensign was the same lawyer who told Boasberg last month that he was unaware of any plans to deport Venezuelans under the Alien Enemies Act — even while two planes carrying deportees were en route to El Salvador.
Around the same time that the ACLU filed its emergency appeal at the Supreme Court, it filed a similar motion asking Boasberg to block the deportations himself.