US President Donald Trump sits during his meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on March 13, 2025. Photo by Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA (Sipa via AP Images).
The Trump administration is imploring the U.S. Supreme Court to allow federal authorities to resume the removal of migrants currently detained in Texas under the president’s controversial proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The Justice Department filed the 12-page memo with the high court on Monday, three days after U.S. District Judge James Hendrix, who was appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, handed the administration a rare legal victory by denying several migrant detainees the ability to litigate their claims as a class, or collectively.
Hendrix reasoned that the three petitioners were too “distinct” and “diverse” — in terms of facts, claims, and potential remedies — to make up a coherent class. However, Hendrix stayed the effect of his ruling until detainees have the opportunity to seek and receive — or be denied — consideration at the highest level.
The underlying litigation is one of many AEA cases directly tracing its lineage to the Supreme Court’s blockbuster April 7 ruling, which dissolved a nationwide injunction prohibiting summary deportations of accused members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) under the auspices of the obscure 18th-century wartime authority. However, the nine justices unanimously agreed that the government could not resume AEA removals without providing detainees due process, prescribing habeas corpus petitions as the proper means for seeking redress.
Habeas petitions are challenges to the legality of an individual’s detainment and must be filed in the jurisdictions where the detainee is being held. Here, the plaintiffs filed a class action habeas petition in the Northern District of Texas.
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The Supreme Court on April 19 specifically intervened in the case before Hendrix, issuing an order barring the removal of all noncitizens in custody in the district who “were, are, or will be” subject to removal under the AEA.
But according to the administration, multiple “intervening developments” have occurred since the high court’s April 19 order which make clear that “neither interim nor permanent relief” is warranted for the plaintiffs. At a minimum, the Justice Department asked the Supreme Court to modify its temporary injunction and allow the government begin removing migrants who may be subject to the proclamation through non-AEA authorities.
In Monday’s filing, the Justice Department asserted that it was becoming dangerously untenable to keep an estimated 176 accused TdA members in the country, citing to a previously unreported incident that allegedly took place at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Texas on April 26.
“Unsurprisingly, given that the putative class members were detained based on their membership in a designated foreign terrorist organization, they have proven to be especially dangerous to maintain in prolonged detention. Some 23 putative class members recently barricaded themselves in a housing unit for several hours and threatened to take hostages and harm ICE officers,” the filing states. “Transferring such prisoners to other facilities, moreover, creates ongoing risks of prison recruitment and expansion of Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang activities within the United States. That is an alarming prospect, given that TdA has ‘conducted kidnappings, extorted businesses, bribed public officials, authorized its members to attack and kill U.S. law enforcement, and assassinated a Venezuelan opposition figure’ — prompting the Secretary of State to deem TdA a threat to national security.”
The administration claimed that the difficulty in housing such migrants has “made it imperative” for the high court to allow for their removal.
Notably, the administration has already admitted to “wrongfully” removing multiple migrants to a notorious terrorist prison in El Salvador and doing little, if anything, to abide by court orders to facilitate the return of those individuals.
Attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), who represent the plaintiffs in the case, have asked the Supreme Court to maintain its injunction, emphasizing that “every other district court faced with this issue has certified a district-wide habeas class” while challenges to constitutionality of Trump’s proclamation are litigated.
Multiple federal judges, including one appointed by Trump, have already found that Trump’s invocation of the AEA was unlawful, as TdA’s presence in the U.S. did not constitute an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” as required under the statute.
Colin Kalmbacher contributed to this report.
