President Donald Trump speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, Monday, March 3, 2025 (Pool via AP).
President Donald Trump lashed out at the U.S. Supreme Court over the weekend after it blocked his administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelan migrants under an 18th-century wartime authority, calling the Friday ruling “a bad and dangerous day for America,” while also sharing a Truth Social post that declared it an “illegal injunction.”
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do,” Trump blasted from his Truth Social page on Friday evening.
The post followed a 7–2 decision from the high court that temporarily halts Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — last invoked during World War II to detain and incarcerate Japanese Americans living in the United States — that’s now being used by Homeland Security to deport people who are accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang with little or no due process. The Trump administration designated the Venezuelan gang as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year, clearing the way for the AEA’s use.
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“The Supreme Court has just ruled that the worst murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and even those who are mentally insane, who came into our Country illegally, are not allowed to be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process, one that will take, possibly, many years for each person, and one that will allow these people to commit many crimes before they even see the inside of a Courthouse,” Trump said Friday.
“The result of this decision will let more CRIMINALS pour into our Country, doing great harm to our cherished American public,” he continued. “It will also encourage other criminals to illegally enter our Country, wreaking havoc and bedlam wherever they go.”
On Saturday, Trump shared a post from ally and lawyer Mike Davis, condemning the Supreme Court order as being an “illegal injunction” on the president, which Davis claims is “preventing him from commanding military operations to expel these foreign terrorists,” according to the post.
“The President should house these terrorists near the Chevy Chase Country Club, with daytime release,” Davis wrote
Justices John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh both reportedly live in Chevy Chase, Maryland, where the country club is located. Both were reportedly members of the club as of 2018.
While the ruling is a setback for Trump’s immigration strategy, it stops short of addressing whether his proclamation invoking the AEA was constitutional. Instead, it effectively extends the temporary injunction that the Supreme Court issued covering AEA removals in the Northern District of Texas on April 19. The majority, which included Roberts and Kavanaugh, remanded the case back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals and directed the lower courts to address the constitutionality and other AEA cases “expeditiously.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, just like they did with the April 19 order.
“From the Court’s order, it is not entirely clear whether the Court has silently decided issues that go beyond the question of interim relief. (I certainly hope that it has not.) But if it has done so, today’s order is doubly extraordinary,” Alito wrote in a 14-page dissent.
He offered three justifications: that the Supreme Court “lacked jurisdiction,” that the plaintiffs didn’t show that an injunction was warranted, and that the decision to hear the case before any decision had been made on the merits by lower courts is “unwarranted.”
In his Truth Social post Friday, Trump thanked Alito and Thomas “for attempting to protect our Country” by dissenting.
“This is a bad and dangerous day for America!” he concluded.
Jerry Lambe and Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
