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The US Supreme Court has temporarily barred Donald Trump from using a rarely-used law dating back to the 18th century to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants

The country’s highest court said in the early hours of Saturday that the government was “directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until a further order of this court”.

The Trump administration has been attempting to remove alleged members of a Venezuelan gang using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798,  a law last invoked during the second world war to intern non-US citizens of Italian, German and Japanese descent.

Two of the court’s nine judges, conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, dissented from the majority ruling.

Lawyers for the migrants, who are being held in a Texas prison, expressed relief at the decision.

“These men were in imminent danger of spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had a chance to go to court,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, who is a lead counsel in the case.

Several alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang were deported to a jail in El Salvador last month, despite a court order blocking their deportations.

Lower court judge James Boasberg had issued a temporary restraining order blocking the administration’s attempts to deport the alleged gang members. The order prompted President Donald Trump to call for his impeachment.

The alleged gang members were flown to El Salvador despite Boasberg’s ruling that the planes they were on should be turned around.

“We are relieved that the Supreme Court has not permitted the administration to whisk them away, the way others were just last month,” Gelernt said.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court lifted the freeze on deportations in a 5-4 vote that was seen as a win for the White House.

However, that judgment did not rule on Trump’s attempt to use the long-standing legislation. Instead it was a narrow order saying that the Venezuelan men who sought to challenge Trump had filed their lawsuit in the wrong jurisdiction.