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 delivered a setback to the Trump administration on Friday, ruling against its attempt to swiftly deport Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador using the 18th-century wartime authority known as the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), without allowing much due process.
By a 7-2 vote, the justices temporarily halted the federal government’s efforts to swiftly remove a group of Venezuelan men detained in the Northern District of Texas. These men have been accused by the administration of being members of the Tren da Aragua gang.
The per curiam order, issued without a specific author, criticized the Trump administration for potentially sentencing the petitioners to a notorious terrorist prison indefinitely with merely a day’s warning. It also highlighted the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported despite having protected status and has been stuck in El Salvador 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.
