Supreme Court allows use of wartime law to deport alleged gang members
The Supreme Court on Monday removed a temporary block on the Trump administration’s use of a controversial wartime authority to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, ruling the five immigrants who challenged the policy did so in the wrong court.
“The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” the justices wrote of the challenge in U.S. District Court in D.C. “As a result, the Government is likely to succeed on the merits of this action.”
The 5-4 ruling did not touch on the underlying legal questions of the challenge. It leaves open the possibility the migrants could refile their case in Texas or other jurisdictions where they are detained. But for now, it opens the door for the Trump administration to deport more Venezuelan migrants under the act, although it also said the government must give prospective deportees notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.
And it appears to take the central legal issues of the case away from U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg, whose temporary restraining order blocking the deportations prompted impeachment calls from Trump and his allies.
The court’s three liberal justices dissented, joined in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett. The liberals warned of potential “life or death consequences” from the majority’s order and criticized their colleagues, saying their ruling “flouts well-established limits … creates new law on the emergency docket, and elides the serious threat our intervention poses to the lives of individual detainees.”
President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which is aimed at removing citizens of a nation with which the United States is at war, after declaring the presence of the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang in the United States an “invasion.”
Government attorneys said Boasberg’s block on such deportations while litigation continues was an unconstitutional imposition on the president’s broad authority to deal with national security issues and conduct foreign policy. They claimed the gang is operating in the United States at the behest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, an idea disputed by government intelligence agencies.
“This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country — the President … or the Judiciary,” acting solicitor general Sarah M. Harris wrote in court filings. “The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice.”
Boasberg halted the deportations temporarily in response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five migrants. The organization says Trump can’t invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans because the United States is not at war with the country. It called the president’s use of the act “unprecedented.”