The US Supreme Court, in a dramatic nighttime intervention on Saturday, blocked US President Donald Trump’s unprecedented use of an obscure law to deport Venezuelan migrants without due process.
The emergency ruling said that two of the most conservative justices on the nine-member panel had dissented.
The order temporarily prevents the government from continuing to expel migrants under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act — last used to round up Japanese American citizens during World War II.
Photo: Reuters
Trump invoked the law last month to deport Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador that holds thousands of that country’s gangsters.
The court decision was triggered by imminent plans late on Friday to expel dozens more Venezuelans under the act, meaning they would have been deported with next to no ability to hear evidence or challenge their cases.
The court said that “the government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order.”
Trump justifies summary expulsions — and the detention of people in El Salvador — by insisting that he is cracking down on violent Venezuelan criminal gangs now classified by the US government as terrorists.
However, the policy is fueling opposition concerns that the Republican is ignoring the US Constitution in a broader bid to amass power. The row over the Alien Enemies Act comes amid muscular assaults by the Trump administration against big law firms, Harvard and other universities, and major independent media outlets.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which took the lead in seeking to halt Friday’s planned deportations, welcomed the Supreme Court ruling.
“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,” attorney Lee Gelernt said.
On Saturday the government filed a motion with the Supreme Court arguing that it should not be prevented from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport people it says are terrorists.
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