The Trump administration will not be authorized to expel a group of Venezuelan detainees accused of being members of a violent gang under a law rarely invoked in wartime while the case is disputed before the courts, the Supreme Court announced on Friday.
The judges referred the case before a federal court of appeal, ordering him to examine complaints by migrants according to which they could not be legally expelled under the law on extraterrestrial enemies, the old law of war invoked by the Trump administration. The judges said that the Court of Appeal should also examine what type of notice the government should be required to provide that would allow migrants to challenge their deportations.
The court declared that its order would remain in place until the American Court of Appeal for the fifth circuit is ruled and that the Supreme Court has examined any appeal from this decision.
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote a dissent, arguing that the judges did not have the power to hear the dispute at this stage. He was joined by judge Clarence Thomas.
The decision brings a hard time to the efforts of the Trump administration to deploy the law in wartime to prosecute Swift, sweeping the deportations of Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of the Gang, Tren of Aragua.
He also suggests that a majority of judges can be skeptical about the deportees of migrants to be offered enough regular procedure protections before being expelled, potentially to a prison for Salvador terrorists.
In their order, the judges said that the challenges confronted with prisoners are “particularly heavy”, citing the case of a man from Maryland, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was “expected by mistake” at El Salvador prison in March. So far, the Trump administration has said that it was unable to bring it back, despite an order from judges to “facilitate” its return.
In such circumstances, the judges wrote: “Note about 24 hours before withdrawal, devoid of information on how to exercise rights to regular procedure to contest this withdrawal, certainly does not succeed.”
President Trump reacted with Fury to the decision. “The Supreme Court will not allow us to get out of the criminals of our country!” He said on social networks. In a later article, he wrote: “The United States Supreme Court does not allow me to do what I was elected to do” and called it “a bad and dangerous day for America”.
Migrant lawyers responded by help.
The decision “means that more people will not be secretly sent to a brutal Salvador prison,” said Lee Genernt, lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. He added that the use by the administration of the law in wartime “during the peacetime, without regular procedure, raises questions of large -scale importance”.
The Trump administration has tried to use the law as a tool in its signature initiative to accelerate the expulsion of millions of migrants, leading to a confrontation with a skeptical judicial system.
Several judges of the lower courts have concluded that the administration has exceeded the scope of the law, which can only be invoked when the United States has been subject to an “invasion” or a “predatory incursion” and have blocked the expulsion of groups of Venezuelans.
The judges of the Supreme Court have been invited to weigh the expulsion plans of the Trump administration several times in recent months, and they had already intervened to temporarily block the expulsion of a group of Venezuelans who were held in northern Texas.
The order of Friday came after a legal struggle with high issues between the Trump administration and the ACLU lawyers in one of these challenges. Lawyers rushed to the court on April 18 after learning that the Venezuelan migrants detained in Texas and accused of being members of Tren from Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, had received imminent dismissal notices and were charged on buses, probably taken to the airport.
The group quickly put legal action before a Federal Court of First Instance in Abilene, Texas, in the name of two of the Venezuelans detained in the detention center. Lawyers from the Ministry of Justice responded, saying to a trial court judge that they did not have the immediate intention of deporting the prisoners.
The judge, James W. Hendrix, who was appointed during the first Trump administration, refused to make an order temporarily blocking the deportations.
ACLU subsequently asked the Supreme Court to act instead.
After midnight on April 19, the judges temporarily interrupted the expulsions, writing: “The government is ordered not to withdraw any members of the putative class of the United States in prisoners until the additional order of this court,” said the order.
The judges moved quickly that night and the emergency request was pending before the court since.
The general solicitor D. John Sauer had urged the judges in a judicial file to allow the lower courts to weigh before intervening further in the case. He did not address the details of the ACLU claims according to which the deportations had been imminent, the buses being loaded for the airport. Rather, he declared that the government had provided for in prisoners subject to an imminent expulsion and that they “had enough time to file” the complaints contesting their withdrawal.
In a response to the Court, the ACLU challenged it, arguing that the Trump administration had taken “measures contrary to the specific decision of this court” that the government gives an opinion and time to challenge the deportations.
Instead of providing an opinion to allow prisoners to challenge their withdrawal, the group’s thesis said: “The government has given detainees a form only in English, not provided to any lawyer, which nowhere mentioned the right to challenge the designation or withdrawal, and even less explain how the prisoners could do so.”
Earlier this week, Mr. Sauer again pushed judges to allow deportations. In a file, the administration argued that “serious difficulties occurred” from the holding of the group of 176 migrants who had been protected from the referral by the court decision of the court last month.
The Trump administration said that on April 26, a group of 23 migrants was barricaded within a housing unit for several hours, threatened to take hostages and harm immigration agents and tried to flood the unit by obstructing the toilet.
“The government has a strong interest in quickly withdrawing from the country” from gang members “who represent a danger” for immigration agents, members of the staff of establishments and other detainees, wrote Mr. Sauer.
There were few public packaging under the conditions of the installation of Texas. On April 28, Reuters captured aerial images of the men held there. In the courtyard of the detention center, 31 men, some wearing red combinations designating them as high risks, formed the SOS letters.
