U.S. Supreme Court Pauses Deportations Under Wartime Law

By Ashley Murray for States Newsroom

The U.S. Supreme Court building. (Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom)

The U.S. Supreme Court early Saturday temporarily blocked a new round of deportations under the wartime Alien Enemies Act until the high court considers the case of several migrants in Texas whose lawyers say are at risk for "imminent removal.”

The justices issued the one-page order just after 1:00 a.m. Eastern, directing the government “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”

The order was unsigned and noted conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

The rare overnight order followed a flurry of activity Friday after the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals denied the migrants’ appeal for a temporary restraining order.

A federal judge in the Northern District of Texas on Thursday denied the petitioners were at “imminent risk of summary removal” because immigration officials said in a previous court filing they would not deport the migrants until the district court resolved allegations that the removals are illegal.

The American Civil Liberties Union asked the Supreme Court to take up the matter Friday after the group said their clients were “loaded on to buses, presumably headed to the airport,” violating an earlier ruling from the justices.

The attorneys for Venezuelan men held at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson, Texas, “learned that officers at Bluebonnet have distributed notices under the Alien Enemies Act, in English only, that designate Venezuelan men for removal under the AEA, and have told the men that the removals are imminent and will happen today.”

“These removals could therefore occur at any moment,” the ACLU wrote in its application.

President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in mid-March to trigger the removals of the Venezuelans age 14 and up whom the administration suspected had ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.

The deportation flights sparked a legal challenge separately winding through the federal courts. Family members of many of the Venezuelan men say they have no gang ties and have been illegally deported without due process.