President Donald Trump at a press conference at the White House in Washington on February 27, 2025 (Yuri Gripas/Abaca/Sipa USA; via AP Images).
The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday issued the Trump administration another loss in its effort to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador with little or no due process under an 18th-century wartime authority called the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).
The justices voted 7-2 to temporarily block the federal government from summarily removing a class of Venezuelan men currently being detained in the Northern District of Texas whom the administration has accused of being members of the Tren da Aragua gang.
In the per curiam order, meaning it was not authored by any individual justice, the majority rebuked the Trump administration for potentially placing the petitioners in a notorious terrorist prison for what could be the rest of their lives with only about one day of notice. The order also invoked the unfortunate fate of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who had protected status when he was “mistakenly” shipped to El Salvador, where he has remained since mid-March.
“The Government does not contest before this Court the applicants’ description of the notice afforded to AEA detainees in the Northern District of Texas, nor the assertion that the Government was poised to carry out removals imminently,” the order states. “The Government has represented elsewhere that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador, where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention. The detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty. 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.”
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While the order is yet another AEA-related loss for the Trump administration, the justices once again did not rule on the merits as to whether Trump’s proclamation invoking the act 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, 2025.
The majority ultimately remanded the case back to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, directing the lower courts to address this and other AEA cases “expeditiously.” Trump-appointed Justice Brett Kavanaugh issued a concurring opinion in which he stated that he believed the court should address the merits of the case immediately
Similar to the April 19 order from the high court, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the majority.
“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.
