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Another federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s efforts to deport migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, at least for now.
Judge Charlotte Sweeney, of the Colorado District Court, ruled on Tuesday that the White House could not order the removal of migrants held in Colorado detention centers under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), an 18th century wartime law that President Donald Trump is exploiting in order to remove undocumented migrants from the United States. Trump asserts he can use the law to deport people, without due process, by declaring them to be members of gangs he’s deemed terrorist organizations.
Sweeney’s ruling is the latest in a series of decisions in which federal judges have intervened to delay or prevent the use of the AEA to carry out deportations without due process. The judge found that Trump is using the act “improperly,” because the U.S. is facing no actual invasion or predatory incursion.
Judge Sweeney granted a temporary restraining order to the American Civil Liberties Union and the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network filed on behalf of migrants detained in Colorado. She wrote that the government was required to not only provide written notice to the individual — in a language they understand — that the “government intends to remove individuals pursuant to the [AEA],” but that it must “provide notice of a right to seek judicial review, and inform individuals they may consult an attorney regarding their detainment and the government’s intent to remove them.”
Her order follows a Saturday ruling from the Supreme Court temporarily blocking the president from using the AEA to deport another cohort of Venezuelan migrants, after his administration sent hundreds to Salvadoran prisons where they could face torture and human rights abuses.
Earlier this month, the Supreme Court determined that the Trump administration was required to notify migrants detained under the AEA that they were subject to removal under the act and provide them a reasonable opportunity to contest their removals. Despite the ruling, the ACLU and other advocacy organizations have asserted that the administration has continued to detain migrants and attempt to deport them without giving reasonable notice or time to contest their deportations.
Trump lashed out at the Supreme Court on Monday after it paused his deportations under the AEA. “We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years,” the president claimed, despite the requirement under the Fifth Amendment that the government extend due process rights to everyone.
D.C. District Court Judge James Boasberg, the first judge to intervene on behalf of migrants being subjected to the AEA, is currently weighing contempt proceedings against members of the Trump administration over their open defiance of his court order barring their original deportation of hundreds of migrants to El Salvador. District court judges in Massachusetts, New York, and Texas have also issued orders forcing the administration to pump the breaks on their immigration crackdown.
The Supreme Court has separately directed the administration to “facilitate” the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man whom it illegally sent to prison in El Salvador, despite a court having granted him a “protection from removal” order barring him from being sent back to that country.
Trump’s administration has made a public show out of refusing to comply with the Supreme Court’s order in that case, and it has refused to follow a lower court’s orders seeking to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return as directed by the Supreme Court. Lawyers for Abrego Garcia’s family wrote in a court filing on Monday that the administration is now failing to comply with the lower court judge’s order granting discovery regarding the government’s efforts (or lack thereof) to bring him back to the U.S.
“On the eve of the first court-ordered deposition concerning the government’s failure to comply with this court’s orders, the government responded to plaintiffs’ discovery requests by producing nothing of substance,” wrote the lawyers for Abrego Garcia’s family.
Trump’s Justice Department claimed in its discovery filing before the lower court on Monday that the administration has not been — and cannot be — “ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador.”
This is patently false. The Supreme Court’s April 10 ruling found the lower court’s original order in Abrego Garcia’s case “properly requires the government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
Trump’s administration has, indeed, been ordered to fix its illegal deportation. It just doesn’t care.
