On Wednesday, the Trump administration gained some insight into its long-delayed initiatives to restart the widespread deportation of Latin American immigrants utilizing the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

In a 15-page opinion document, U.S. District Judge Stephanie L. Haines, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in his initial term, endorsed a plan for a 21-day notification period to inform potential detainees about their possible deportations under the rarely used 18th-century wartime legislation.

In the underlying case, the petitioner is a Venezuelan migrant identified in court documents as “W.J.C.C.” who sought to vindicate the 21-day notice period and also to prevent the government from taking him outside the jurisdiction of the Western District of Pennsylvania.

The court signed off on the petitioner”s first request regarding the notice period, while denying his request to enjoin the government from moving him to another detention facility.

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While the details of the case are largely unknown, with most of the filings under seal, the government opposed both requests.

Haines, for her part, said she was simply requiring the government to bring its standards in line with a case she decided early last month.

In May, in a ruling widely viewed as favorable to the Trump administration, Haines declined to certify a class of immigrants facing deportation under the AEA, directing them instead to file individual petitions for habeas corpus.

The writ of habeas corpus is a 900-year-old legal protection afforded to persons against authoritarian impulses of law enforcement and government executives, which allows an advocate to argue someone is being illegally confined, detained or imprisoned. It is generally considered the bedrock of the American and British legal systems.

The writ also attempts to require the government to answer questions in court and account for its actions by forcing an administrative process on, for example, the detention and deportation of immigrants.

Habeas writs have become increasingly relevant after the Trump administration, in violation of a court order, flew planes full of immigrant detainees to a notorious prison in El Salvador, citing the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798. Preemptively, attorneys with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) warned such deportations would violate habeas corpus, along with other rights.

As litigation grew in the aftermath of those deportations – and as the government planned similar deportation flights – district courts increasingly moved to stop the government from any repeat behavior, largely agreeing with the ACLU’s analysis.

On April 7, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously agreed the government could not use the AEA without due process and prescribed the use of habeas corpus petitions to litigate detention under the obscure wartime law. Then, on April 19, the high court issued an atypical Saturday ruling ordering the government “not to remove” a certain group of immigrants “until further order.”

Haines, for her part, has bucked some of those trends – but views herself as anticipating some of the other AEA-related fallout.

On May 13, she became the very first judge in the country to rule on the merits that Trump’s AEA proclamation was actually valid. This ruling broke with several of her colleagues — including Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. of Texas — all of whom found the administration’s effort failed to meet the preconditions prescribed by the words contained in the AEA statute.

Still, in finding that Trump had, in fact, satisfied the conditions precedent in the AEA, Haines did not disturb the notion that habeas remained a viable way to challenge an AEA determination – nor could she. In fact, Haines fashioned the 21-day notice period out of judicial cloth herself the very next day – in the same order denying class certification.

On May 16, the U.S. Supreme Court strongly rebuked the Trump administration’s efforts to comply with the previous habeas decision by only giving AEA detainees one day of notice to challenge their deportations. The high court also rejected an argument that a habeas petition was required to receive notice in the first place.

Haines, then, views her ruling as somewhat prescient.

The Wednesday ruling reads, in a very limited sense, like a bit of a judicial victory lap.

“Three days after this Court issued its decision in A.S.R., the United States Supreme Court issued its ruling in A.A.R.P. v. Trump,” the court observes. “[A]fter taking stock of certain circumstances relative to removals under the AEA and the Proclamation, the Court held that ‘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.’ At the outset, this Court observes that the foregoing law strongly supports its decision to persist in requiring the notice that it articulated in A.S.R.”