Court clears way for Trump to use 18th century law for deportations

Washington: The Supreme Court has allowed the Trump administration to use an 18th century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants but says they must get a court hearing before they are taken from the United States.

In a bitterly divided decision, the court said on Tuesday (AEST) the administration must give Venezuelans it claims are gang members “reasonable time” to go to court.

But the conservative majority said the legal challenges must take place in Texas, instead of a Washington courtroom.

Donald Trump in March ordered the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members from the United States to a prison in El Salvador.Credit: El Salvador PPO via AP

The court’s action appears to bar the administration from immediately resuming the flights that last month carried hundreds of migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. The flights came soon after US President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II to justify the deportations under a presidential proclamation, calling the Tren de Aragua gang an invading force.

The majority said nothing about those flights, which took off without providing the hearing which the justices now say is necessary.

In dissent, the three liberal justices said the administration had sought to avoid judicial review in this case, and the court “now rewards the government for its behaviour”. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined portions of the dissent.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it would be harder for people to challenge deportations individually, wherever they were being held, and noted that the administration had also said in another case before the court that it was unable to return people who had been deported to the El Salvador prison by mistake.

“We, as a nation and a court of law, should be better than this,” she wrote.

The justices acted on the administration’s emergency appeal after the federal appeals court in Washington left in place an order temporarily prohibiting deportations of the migrants accused of being gang members under the rarely used Alien Enemies Act.

“For all the rhetoric of the dissents,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion, the high court order confirms “that the detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal”.

The case has become a flashpoint amid escalating tension between the White House and the federal courts. It’s the second time in less than a week that a majority of conservative justices has handed Trump at least a partial victory in an emergency appeal after lower courts had blocked parts of his agenda.

Several other cases are pending, including over Trump’s plan to deny citizenship to US-born children of parents who are in the country illegally.

Trump praised the court for its action.

“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. A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social site.

The original order blocking the deportations to El Salvador was issued by US District Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge at the federal courthouse in Washington.

Lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union filed the lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan non-citizens who were being held in Texas, hours after the proclamation was made public and as immigration authorities were shepherding hundreds of migrants to waiting airplanes.

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the Civil Liberties Union, said the “critical point” of the high court’s ruling was that people must be allowed due process to challenge their removal. “That is an important victory,” he said.

Boasberg imposed a temporary halt on deportations and also ordered planeloads of Venezuelan immigrants to return to the US. That did not happen. The judge held a hearing last week over whether the government had defied his order to turn the planes around. The administration has invoked a “state secrets privilege” and refused to give Boasberg any additional information about the deportations.

Trump and his allies have called for impeaching Boasberg. In a rare statement, Chief Justice John Roberts said: “Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision.”

AP

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