In a significant setback for President Donald Trump, seven of the nine Supreme Court justices united to thwart his attempt to leverage an 18th-century wartime law for the expedited deportation of Venezuelan nationals. Justice Samuel Alito criticized his colleagues for choosing to hear the case in the first place.

According to Law&Crime, the justices issued a 7-2 ruling on Friday that prevented the federal government from proceeding with the immediate deportation of the plaintiffs. These plaintiffs, detained in the Northern U.S. District of Texas, were alleged by the Trump administration to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

“[N]otice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the justices wrote in the per curiam order, which was not attributed to a specific author. In its ruling, the court effectively extended the temporary injunction that the Supreme Court issued covering AEA removals in the Northern District of Texas on April 19, 2025.

Alito, along with Justice Clarence Thomas, disagreed with his colleagues’ conclusion, and took them to task in a 14-page dissent.

“I cannot join the decision of the Court,” he began. He followed with offering three justifications: that the Supreme Court “lacked jurisdiction,” that the plaintiffs didn’t show that an injunction was warranted, and that the decision to hear the case before any decision had been made on the merits by lower courts is “unwarranted.”

Alito — who also dissented from the Supreme Court’s April 19 directive — similarly diverged from his colleagues here. He disputed the timeline of events that the Supreme Court seemed to accept, starting with the actions of U.S. District Judge James Hendrix, a Trump appointee who denied class action certification to the petitioners after determining that they were too “distinct” and “diverse” to make up a coherent class.

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“The Court asserts that the District Court failed to act ‘for 14 hours and 28 minutes,’ but that is misleading,” Alito wrote. “Here is what actually happened.”

Per Alito, the actual order of events was as follows:

On the evening of April 17, lawyers for A.A.R.P. and W.M.M. made a phone call in which they demanded “to talk to the Judge immediately … and have the Judge issue an order.” As the District Court has since correctly noted, judges are generally not permitted to consider such ex parte communications So the judge issued an electronic order admonishing the attorneys and stating that “[t]o the extent either party seeks emergency relief, it may file a motion to do so. If an emergency motion is filed, the opposing party shall have 24 hours to file a response.”

Thus, when the attorneys for A.A.R.P. and W.M.M. filed their renewed motion for a TRO at 12:34 a.m. on April 18, they were fully aware that the District Court intended to give the Government 24 hours to file a response. But in that motion, the attorneys said nothing about a plan to appeal if the District Court elected to wait for that response.

It was not until their 12:48 p.m. emergency motion for an immediate status conference that the attorneys suddenly informed the court that they would file an appeal if the District Court did not act within 42 minutes, i.e., by 1:30 p.m. The attorneys then filed their appeal at 3:02 p.m., just 133 minutes after they put the District Court on notice that they would seek appellate relief.

These actions by the plaintiffs’ attorneys, Alito said, were highly unusual.

“Whether or not the actions taken by applicants’ attorneys are thought to be justified under the circumstances, delivering such an ultimatum to a district court judge (‘Act on my motion on a complex matter within 42 or 133 minutes or I’ll file an appeal and divest you of jurisdiction’) represented a very stark departure from what is usually regarded as acceptable practice,” he wrote.

Rather than being co-opted by the Supreme Court, Alito said, Hendrix deserved praise.

“Faced with applicants’ extraordinary demand, the District Court proceeded in an entirely reasonable manner,” Alito wrote. The justice praised Hendrix, who described himself as “working with utmost diligence to resolve [the] important and complicated issues [presented by the motion] as quickly as possible.” Alito also noted that Hendrix was “was prepared to issue an order” as soon as possible after the government filed its response, if not sooner.

“We should commend this careful approach, not criticize it,” Alito wrote.

The justice also chastised his colleagues for relying on “weak” factual support the plaintiffs provided to Hendrix, scolding them for “conflat[ing] the information that was in the record on April 18 with the new information that was presented to this Court several days later.”

That April 18 record, Alito wrote, “included no concrete evidence that any removals were so imminent that a ruling had to be made immediately.” To Alito, the plaintiffs’ “six sworn declarations and a photograph that the applicants asserted was an image of a notice of removal” did not amount to “extreme urgency” that justified going beyond Hendrix and seeking relief from higher courts.

Moreover, Alito said, the DOJ had told Hendrix that it didn’t have plans to deport the petitioners.