The United States Supreme Court has granted an emergency petition from a group of migrants in Texas, barring the use of an 18th-century wartime law to expedite their removals.
Friday’s unsigned decision (PDF) is yet another blow to the administration of President Donald Trump, who has sought to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to swiftly deport undocumented immigrants out of the US.
Only two conservative justices dissented: Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
While the high court has yet to rule on the merits of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, it did issue “injunctive relief” to Venezuelan migrants faced with expulsion under the centuries-old law.
“We have long held that ‘no person shall be’ removed from the United States ‘without opportunity, at some time, to be heard’,” the court majority wrote in its ruling.
It reaffirmed a previous opinion that migrants in the US are entitled to due process – in other words, they are entitled to a fair hearing in the judicial system – before their deportation.
Friday’s case was brought by two unnamed migrants from Venezuela, identified only by initials. They are being held in a detention centre in north Texas as they face deportation.
The Trump administration has accused them, and others from Venezuela, of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang. It has further sought to paint undocumented migration into the US as an “invasion” and link Tren de Aragua’s activities in the US to the Venezuelan government, an assertion that a recently declassified intelligence memo disputes.
That, the Trump administration has argued, justifies its use of the Alien Enemies Act, which has only been used three times prior in US history – and only during periods of war.
But Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act has spurred a legal backlash, with several US district courts hearing petitions from migrants fearing expulsion under the law.
Multiple judges have barred the law’s use for expedited removals. But one judge in Pennsylvania ruled the Trump administration could deploy the law – provided it offer appropriate notice to those facing deportation. She suggested 21 days.
The Supreme Court on Friday did not weigh in on whether Trump’s use of the law was merited. Instead, its ruling – 24 pages in total, including a dissent – hewed closely to the issue of whether the Venezuelans in question deserved relief from their imminent deportation under the law.
The majority of the nine-justice bench noted that “evidence” it had seen in the case suggested “the Government had in fact taken steps on the afternoon of April 18” to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, even transporting the migrants “from their detention facility to an airport and later returning them”.
The justices asserted that they had a right to weigh in on the case, in order to prevent “irreparable harm” to the migrants and assert their jurisdiction in the case. Otherwise, they pointed out a deportation could put the migrants beyond their reach.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh went a step further in a separate opinion, calling on the Supreme Court to issue a final and binding ruling in the matter, rather than simply grant this one petition.
“The circumstances call for a prompt and final resolution, which likely can be provided only by this Court,” he said, agreeing with the majority’s decision.
Thomas and Alito, in their dissent, argued the Supreme Court had not afforded enough time to a lower court to rule on the emergency petition.
In the aftermath of the ruling, Trump lashed out on Truth Social, portraying the Supreme Court’s majority as overly lax towards migrants.
“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” Trump wrote in the first of two consecutive posts.
In the second, he called Friday’s decision the mark of a “bad and dangerous day in America”. He complained that affirming the right to due process would result in “a long, protracted, and expensive Legal Process, one that will take, possibly, many years for each person”.
He also argued that the high court was preventing him from exercising his executive authority.
“The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do,” he wrote, imagining a circumstance where extended deportation hearings would lead to “bedlam” in the US.
His administration has long accused the courts of interference in his agenda. But critics have warned that Trump’s actions – particularly, alleged efforts to ignore court orders – are eroding the US’s constitutional system of checks and balances.
In a statement after the ruling, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) praised the court’s decision as a bulwark against human rights abuses.
“The court’s decision to stay removals is a powerful rebuke to the government’s attempt to hurry people away to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project.
“The use of a wartime authority during peacetime, without even affording due process, raises issues of profound importance.”
The Supreme Court currently boasts a conservative supermajority, with six right-leaning judges and three left-leaning ones.
Three among them were appointed by Trump himself. Those three sided with the majority.