Supreme Court clears way for deportations of alleged Venezuelan gang members to resume

Washington — The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to restart for now deportations of migrants it claims are members of a Venezuelan gang using a seldom-invoked wartime authority.

The high court split 5-4 in granting a request for emergency relief sought by the Justice Department in the dispute over President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to swiftly remove alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang without a hearing. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the three liberal justices in criticizing the majority’s decision.

In its unsigned decision, the Supreme Court said the detainees who are challenging their removals under the Alien Enemies Act are confined in Texas, so the venue for their case is “improper” in the District of Columbia, which is where the dispute has been considered.

“As a result, the government is likely to succeed on the merits of this action,” the court said in its ruling lifting two temporary restraining orders issued by a federal district judge in Washington that prevented removals under the Alien Enemies Act.

It added that going forward, detainees subject to the 1798 law “must receive notice” that they face removal under the Alien Enemies Act.

“The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the court said.

The federal district court issued an order last month that prevented the government from deporting the migrants under the 220-year-old law while legal proceedings move forward, and the administration asked the Supreme Court to lift that order.

The decision from the high court to do so comes amid rising tensions between the president and the judiciary, as Mr. Trump’s second-term policies have collided with the federal courts. More than 100 cases that challenge key aspects of his agenda have been filed across the country, and disputes challenging at least six of the president’s actions have so far reached the Supreme Court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority. 

The ongoing fight over Mr. Trump’s effort to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants is one of the most high-profile of the cases, and the district court’s decision temporarily blocking the removals sparked calls from the president and his GOP allies for the judge presiding over the dispute to be impeached.

In its decision, the court said the opinion confirms that detainees subject to removal orders under the Alien Enemies Act are entitled to notice and a chance to challenge their deportation.

“The only question is which court will resolve that challenge. For the reasons set forth, we hold that venue lies in the district of confinement,” it said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a scathing dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and joined in part by Barrett. She called the majority’s legal conclusion “suspect” and accused the Trump administration of largely ignoring “its obligations to the rule of law.”

“The government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law. That a majority of this court now rewards the government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We, as a nation and a court of law, should be better than this,” Sotomayor wrote.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh highlighted the area of agreement among the court. All nine justices, he wrote, agree that judicial review is available. But he said they split as to where that review should take place.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem cheered the ruling with a warning to migrants in the U.S. unlawfully, saying in a statement, “leave now or we will arrest you, lock you up and deport you.”

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the ACLU who argued before the lower courts, told CBS News, “We are disappointed that we will need to start the court process over again in a different venue, but the critical point is that the court rejected the government’s remarkable position that it does not even have to give individuals meaningful advance notice to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act. That is a big victory.”

Mr. Trump signed a proclamation under the Alien Enemies Act last month, claiming that Tren de Aragua is “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” against the U.S. and declaring that all members of the gang in the U.S. unlawfully were subject to immediate detention and removal. The law had previously been invoked three times, and only during declared wars.

The day after Mr. Trump’s proclamation, five Venezuelan nationals who were being held at a detention center in Texas filed a lawsuit that alleged Mr. Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act violated the terms of the law and asked a federal district court in Washington, D.C., to block their removals.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg swiftly agreed to stop their deportations for 14 days and later expanded his temporary order to prohibit the administration from removing all noncitizens in U.S. custody who are subject to Mr. Trump’s proclamation. The judge allowed deportations under other legal authorities. A hearing on a request for a longer preliminary injunction is set for April 8, though it’s unclear whether that will proceed as scheduled.

Boasberg is also separately examining the circumstances surrounding the removal of 137 people under the Alien Enemies Act who were on planes bound for El Salvador while proceedings unfolded. The deportations raised questions as to whether the Trump administration violated an oral order from Boasberg calling for any planes carrying migrants subject to removal under the law to return to the U.S.

The Trump administration appealed Boasberg’s temporary order, but the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit last month declined to allow the administration to resume the deportations. The appeals court divided 2-1 in turning down the government’s request to halt Boasberg’s directive.

In the emergency appeal to the Supreme Court, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris argued that the Alien Enemies Act grants the president sweeping national security authority. 

The district court’s order, she argued in a filing, is “forcing the United States to harbor individuals whom national-security officials have identified as members of a foreign terrorist organization bent upon grievously harming Americans. Those orders — which are likely to extend additional weeks — now jeopardize sensitive diplomatic negotiations and delicate national-security operations, which were designed to extirpate TdA’s presence in our country before it gains a greater foothold.”

The administration also reiterated its request that the Supreme Court step in to curb the temporary restraining orders that have been issued by federal judges and block enforcement of a policy nationwide.

“Here, the district court’s orders have rebuffed the president’s judgments as to how to protect the nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations,” Harris wrote. “More broadly, rule-by-TRO has become so commonplace among district courts that the Executive Branch’s basic functions are in peril.”

But lawyers for the Venezuelan migrants accused the president of stretching the limits of the Alien Enemies Act, which they said risked allowing the government to “immediately begin whisking away anyone” it unilaterally claims is a member of a criminal gang to a foreign prison.

“The president’s effort to shoehorn a criminal gang into the AEA, on a migration-equals-invasion theory, is completely at odds with the limited delegation of wartime authority Congress chose to give him through the statute,” they wrote in a filing.

They also argued that many of the people flown out of the U.S. to a Salvadoran prison are not members of Tren de Aragua, and at least eight were Venezuelan women who were returned to the U.S. 

Allowing the deportations to resume would have devastating consequences for their clients, the lawyers said. Already, 130 Venezuelan men have been sent to El Salvador, where they have been “confined, incommunicado, in one of most brutal prisons in the world, where torture and other human rights abuses are rampant,” they wrote.

“Without the TRO, plaintiffs will suffer extraordinary and irreparable harms — being sent out of the United States to a Salvadoran prison, where they will remain incommunicado, potentially for the rest of their lives, without having had any opportunity to contest their designation as gang members,” lawyers for the migrants said.

The dispute before the Supreme Court comes as the justices are considering a separate request from the Trump administration to lift a lower court order that required the Trump administration to return a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador to the United States. 

The man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, was among those on the deportation flights at issue in the case involving the Alien Enemies Act, but he was removed under a different immigration law. Chief Justice John Roberts earlier Monday temporarily paused the district court’s order that set an 11:59 p.m. Monday deadline for the government to return Abrego Garcia from El Salvador.

contributed to this report.