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The Supreme Court has rejected an emergency bid by the Trump administration to resume deportations without due process under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) — an archaic law that allows the president to suspend the legal rights of foreign nationals during times of armed conflict.
In a 7-2 decision — with conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting — the court ruled that the government was “enjoined from removing the named plaintiffs or putative class members in this action under the AEA pending order by the Fifth Circuit.”
The court returned the central question of the case — whether Trump’s use of the AEA for deportations was even legal and what amount of notice migrants would need to receive — to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.
In the majority opinion — written per curiam — the justices stated that the practices undertaken by the government to carry out deportations, including “notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights,” do not “pass muster.”
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh — a Trump appointee — wrote that the injunction against the government “simply ensures that the Judiciary can decide whether these Venezuelan detainees may be lawfully removed under the Alien Enemies Act before they are in fact removed.”
Trump lashed out at the court after it handed down the ruling. “THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he wrote on Truth Social. He followed that up with another post complaining the high court won’t allow immigrants to “be forced out without going through a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process.”
The president slammed the Supreme Court earlier on Friday, as well. “THE SUPREME COURT IS BEING PLAYED BY THE RADICAL LEFT LOSERS, WHO HAVE NO SUPPORT, THE PUBLIC HATES THEM, AND THEIR ONLY HOPE IS THE INTIMIDATION OF THE COURT, ITSELF. WE CAN’T LET THAT HAPPEN TO OUR COUNTRY!” he wrote.
The decision is a legal blow to Trump’s plans to whisk away untold numbers of migrants under the administration’s convoluted interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act. The government is currently locked in myriad legal battles over its disappearance of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants — whom the administration alleges are gang members — to notoriously dangerous prisons in El Salvador.
While the Supreme Court chose to place a temporary roadblock in front of Trump, they could soon completely reshape the judiciary’s power in the president’s favor. On Thursday, the court heard oral arguments in a challenge to Trump’s January executive order repealing birthright citizenship, a constitutional right. At the center of the government’s argument is an assertion that judges in lower courts do not have the authority to issue nationwide injunctions on the enforcement of executive policies.
Should the court rule in the government’s favor, federal courts will have been effectively neutered, and the Trump administration would have a largely unobstructed path to implementing some of its most inhumane policies.
