Immigration activists have sued to block President Donald Trump from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members using a wartime authority.
The Trump administration has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport illegal aliens, especially those with alleged gang affiliations such as Tren de Aragua or MS-13.
The Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could continue to use the centuries-old authority to deport illegal Venezuelan immigrants alleged to be gang members; however, justices said that the migrants must be given time to challenge their deportation under the Alien Enemies Act.
A Trump Justice Department spokesperson said that the department has “vigorously defended President Trump’s policies and will continue to do so whenever challenged in federal court by rogue judges who think they can control the President’s foreign policy and national security agenda. The Supreme Court’s recent decisions have validated the DOJ’s ongoing arguments to this end in court.”
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), said, “Contrary to the administration’s wishful characterization, the Supreme Court emphatically rejected the government’s position that they could whisk people away without giving them an opportunity to challenge their removal to a foreign prison.”
“The Court simply issued a technical ruling that the challenges should be by habeas corpus, but in no way remotely suggested the Trump administration would win these challenges,” Gelernt added.
Subsequently, the ACLU and other pro-migrant groups have filed to have the government barred from using the Alien Enemies Act altogether:
If that fails, the ACLU and others noted that the Supreme Court requires that the government first inform detainees that they were designated “enemies” under the act and then give them the chance to challenge that classification in court. The Supreme Court did not weigh in on the legality of Trump’s proclamation.
That means the government could have to explain to a judge — and potentially the public — its justification for describing immigrants as gang members eligible for removal under the act. The government has so far refused to release their names or details about their alleged gang affiliation or criminal histories, though it alleges that several of those removed were responsible for heinous crimes.One expert at the Migration Policy Institute said that the ruling from the nation’s highest court grants these migrants due process.
“ICE’s position so far has been, ‘We decide that these people are aliens, and we can just remove them. We get to decide who is an enemy and who is not,’ and that, I think, has been set aside by the Supreme Court. That’s the good part. The bad part is that, to use the due process that the Supreme Court said they’re entitled to, is now a much more tedious and difficult hurdle to cross,” Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the institute, said.
Sean Moran is a policy reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on X @SeanMoran3.
