President Donald Trump scored a huge win in his efforts to deport migrants living in the United States illegally with a major Supreme Court ruling on Monday.
The country’s highest court, in an unsigned 5 – 4 ruling, ruled that the Trump administration can invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members.
Trump had declared that members of the Tren de Aragua gang were terrorists, and his border czar Tom Homan spectacularly rounded up suspected gangsters across the United States last month to send them back to ‘hell hole’ prisons in Venezuela.
But the president’s efforts were halted on March 15 when Obama-appointed US District Court Judge James Boasberg issued an injunction blocking the deportations.
That injunction has now been lifted under the Supreme Court’s ruling – allowing the president to once again send suspected gang members to their home countries.
Trump hailed the ruling as a ‘GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA’ in a post on his Truth Social page Monday night.
‘The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders and protect our families and our Country, itself,’ he wrote.
Attorney General Pamela Bondi similarly hailed the court’s decision on Monday as ‘a landmark victory for the rule of law’ and criticized Boasberg as an activist judge who exceeded his powers.
‘The Department of Justice will continue fighting in court to make America safe again,’ she said in a social media post.
Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act last month to swiftly deport the alleged members of the Tren de Aragua gang, attempting to speed up removals with a law best known for its use to intern Japanese, Italian and German immigrants during World War Two.
He had claimed that members of the gang were ‘conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States’ with the goal of destabilizing the nation.
But Boasberg quickly fought back – ruling that the Alien Enemies Act ‘does not provide a basis for the president’s proclamation given that the terms invasion, predatory incursion really relate to hostile acts perpetrated by any nation and commensurate to war.’
The liberal judge also said that he needed to issue his order immediately because the government already was flying migrants it claimed were newly deportable under Trump’s proclamation to be incarcerated in a notorious El Salvador prison called the Terrorism Confinement Center.
The Trump administration, though, has claimed that the flights had already left US airspace by the time Boasberg issued a written order and were therefore not required to return.
Lawyers with the Justice Department dismissed the weight of Boasberg’s spoken order calling for any planes carrying deportees to be turned around.
In court documents urging the Supreme Court to overturn Boasberg’s order, the Trump administration also argued that Boasberg’s temporary ban encroached on presidential authority to make national security decisions.
It said the judge had ‘rebuffed’ Trump’s immigration agenda, including the president’s ability ‘to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations,’ Fox News reports.
‘This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national security-related operations in this country – the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through [temporary restraining orders],’ lawyers for the Justice Department wrote in their March 28 application to Chief Justice John Roberts – who handles emergency litigation coming out of DC.
‘The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice,’ they argued.
Opposing the government’s application were a group of Venezuelan men in custody of US immigration authorities.
They argued that if Boasberg’s injunction were to be lifted they ‘will suffer extraordinary and irreparable harms – being sent out of the United States to a notorious 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,’ NBC News reports.
The plaintiffs’ family members have denied their alleged gang ties – with lawyers for one of the deportees, a Venezuelan professional soccer player and youth coach, saying U.S. officials had wrongly labeled him a gang member based on a tattoo of a crown meant to honor his favorite team, Real Madrid.
But in Monday’s decision, the court’s majority said it was not resolving the validity of the administration’s reliance on the 18th century law to carry out deportations.
The plaintiffs in the case ‘challenge the government’s interpretation of the Act and assert that they do not fall within the category of removable alien enemies. But we do not reach those arguments,’ the majority wrote.
It instead emphasized that it was deciding that any challenges to deportation under the Alien Enemies Act must be brought in the federal court district where the migrants are detained, meaning that the proper venue for challenges would be Texas – not DC.
At the same time, the majority placed limits on how deportations may occur – emphasizing that judicial review is required.
It said that detainees ‘must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the 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.’
Those who dissented with the court’s decision were conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett and the court’s three liberal justices.
In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor called her colleague’s conclusion ‘suspect.’
She said the court granted the government ‘extraordinary relief’ and did so ‘without mention of the grave harm Plaintiffs will face if they are erroneously removed to El Salvador or regard for the Government’s attempts to subvert the judicial process throughout this litigation.’
Others have argued that Trump’s order exceeded his powers because the Alien Enemies Act authorizes removals only when war has been declared or the United States has been invaded.
The law specifically authorizes the president to deport, detain or place restrictions on individuals whose primary allegiance is to a foreign power and who might pose a national security risk in wartime.
Amid the questions over the legality of the Alien Enemies Act, Trump called for Boasberg’s impeachment by Congress – a process that could remove him from the bench – drawing a rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts.
Trump on social media called Boasberg, who was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2011 in a bipartisan 96-0 vote, a ‘Radical Left Lunatic’ and a ‘troublemaker and agitator.’
Meanwhile, Boasberg is continuing to weigh whether to bring potential contempt charges against administration officials for sending the plane of alleged gangsters to El Salvador despite his order.
A preliminary injunction hearing in that case is set for Tuesday.