The Supreme Court yesterday blocked President Donald Trump from moving forward with deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act for a group of immigrants in northern Texas, siding with Venezuelans who feared they were poised for imminent removal under the sweeping wartime authority.
The decision is a significant loss for Trump, who wants to use the law to speed deportations – and avoid the kind of review normally required before removing people from the country, but the decision is also temporary, and the underlying legal fight over the president’s invocation has continued simultaneously in multiple federal courts across the country.
The Justices sent the case back to an appeals court to decide the underlying questions in the case, including whether the president’s move is legal, and if it is, how much notice the migrants targeted under the act should receive.
Two conservative justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – publicly noted their dissent.
The Trump administration on Monday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to resume the deportations of nearly 200 Venezuelan migrants detained in Texas, requesting that the court lift its order from last month that temporarily paused the deportation of migrants subject to the Alien Enemies Act.
In a new court filing, Solicitor General John Sauer said that some of the 176 detained migrants allegedly associated with the Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, a US-designated foreign terrorist organization, have “proven to be especially dangerous to maintain in prolonged detention.”
According to the filing, a field officer from the Department of Homeland Security described a recent incident where 23 of the detained migrants “barricaded themselves in a housing unit for several hours and threatened to take hostages and harm ICE officers.
Source : CNN
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