Supreme Court Blocks Trump Admin’s Use Of Wartime Law To Deport Venezuelan Migrants, At Least For Now

The US Supreme Court temporarily barred President Donald Trump’s administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration custody early Saturday morning after their lawyers feared their clients were at imminent risk of being sent out of the country.

“The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the justices said in a brief, unsigned decision.

Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in a ruling that was issued just after midnight.

Lawyers with the American Civil Liberties Union filed an urgent request on Friday with the Supreme Court, and multiple other courts, after receiving reports that some of the men had already been loaded onto buses and were being told they were going to be deported—possibly to the notorious prison in El Salvador where others have been jailed. But the ACLU argued that these men had not been given due process by the Trump administration, as required by the Supreme Court.

Migrants, recently released from a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detention center, depart from a transportation bus as they arrive at the Shreveport Regional Airport (SHV) in Shreveport, Louisiana, US, on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2024.

Bloomberg/Getty Images

According to the defense team, the men had received a notice saying they had been classified as members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang originating from Venezuelan prisons that Trump and his administration has labeled a terrorist group, and that they have “been determined to be an Alien Enemy subject to apprehension, restraint, and removal.”

Trump previously invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old wartime authority that grants the president the ability to detain or deport the natives and citizens of another nation, to remove men that immigration enforcement claimed were members of Tren de Aragua.

“These men were in imminent danger of spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had a chance to go to court. We are relieved that the Supreme Court has not permitted the administration to whisk them away the way others were just last month,” Lee Gelernt, the ACLU’s lead attorney in the case, said in a statement on Saturday.

A prison officer guards a cell at maximum security penitentiary CECOT (Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism) on April 4, 2025 in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.

Alex Peña/Getty Images

As of Saturday morning, the White House had not immediately responded to a request from Reuters for comment. When President Trump was asked on Friday about the planned deportations of the Venezuelan men, he claimed he was unfamiliar with the particular case, but said that “if they’re bad people,” he would “certainly authorize it.”

The Trump administration—including the president, Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, and other immigration officials—have in the few months since taking office rolled out a coordinated onslaught against immigrants, both documented and not, across the country. This comes after Trump, when running for office, referred to immigrants as “animals” and said that they are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

In March, more than 130 men whom the Trump administration claimed were Tren de Aragua members were deported to El Salvador. Family members and lawyers for the men have said they were singled out because of tattoos that they have, but an expert on the gang told NBC that tattoos are not closely connected with affiliation to Tren de Aragua and that “Venezuelan gangs are not identified by tattoos.” (Immigration officials have maintained that they did not solely rely on tattoos to identify the deportees as alleged gang members.)

In early April, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration’s use of the 1798 law, with certain limits. The justices, in a 5-4 decision, said that detainees must receive notice that they are subject to removal and be given enough time to seek what due process is granted to them. The latter requirement is what the ACLU is claiming the Trump administration failed to do.

It’s unclear if the president and those in control of immigration enforcement within his administration will follow the Supreme Court ruling.

In this handout provided by Sen. Van Hollen’s Office, U.S. Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) meets with Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia (L) at an undisclosed location in San Salvador, El Salvador on April 17, 2025.

Handout/Getty Images

The administration has so far failed to comply with another directive from the court to facilitate the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant living in Maryland who was illegally deported to El Salvador’s high-security mega prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT.

The case of Abrego Garcia, who is married to a US citizen, has resulted in an ongoing legal battle involving the Trump administration, local and national courts, Democratic US Senator Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, and the president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.

As of Saturday, Abrego Garcia was reportedly moved from CECOT to a detention center hours away. It’s still unclear if or when he will be returned to his family in Maryland, despite the Supreme Court’s directive.

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