High court lets deportation resume
But immigrants should get chance to contest, majority of justices say
By: Maureen Groppe
and Zac Anderson
USA Today
WASHINGTON - The Trump administration can resume deportation of certain immigrants, a divided Supreme Court said this week [04/07/2025] in a partial victory for President Donald Trump's hard-line approach to immigration.
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The court did not rule on whether Trump can use the Alien Enemies Act to deport immigrants it says as members of a Venezuelan gang. And the majority said the immigrants should get a chance to contest their deportation.
..... But the Monday [04/07/2025] ruling says the immigrants borough their challenge - which was field in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia - in the wrong court.
..... "The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia," the majority wrote in an unsigned opinion that lifted a judge's order temporarily blocking deportations without hearing. The count has a 6-3 conservative majority. The three liberal justices, joined in part by conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett, dissented.
..... The division allows the Justice Department to continue using the 1798 law to deport immigrants it says are members of a Venezuelan gang.
..... "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," Trump wrote on social media. " A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!"
..... Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision is "indefensible."
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"The government's conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law, should be better than this."
..... Despite siding with the administration, the court's majority placed limits on how deportations may occur, emphasizing that judicial review is required.
..... 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," the majority wrote.
..... Lee Gelernt, one of the attorneys representing the immigrants, called that an important victory.
..... "The crucial point of this ruling is that the Supreme Court said individuals must be given due process to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act," he said in a statement.
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Still, Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said the decisions makes it harder for immigrants to bring systemic challenges to what the Trump administration is doing.
.... "By relying upon an unpersuasive procedural technicality to force more individualized litigation, the Court is effectively bring a pea-shooter to a gunfight," Vladeck wrote on Substack.
..... The administration says the law gives presidents "near-blanket authority" to detain and deport any non-citizen from a country at war with the U.S. But an appeals court said the invasion had to come from a foreign government rather than a gang. The law has only been sued three times before: during the War of 1812 and the two World Wars.
..... Chief U.S. Judge James Boasberg had ruled that alleged members of Tren de Aragua, also known as TdA, deserve a hearing for a chance to deny they belong to the gang, but the administration successfully argued to the high court that the hearing shouldn't be in Boasberg's court.
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Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote that the case provides a clear choice between whether the president or the judiciary will set policy for sensitive national security cases. "The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President," Harris wrote. "The republic cannot afforded a different choice."
..... She said the Supreme Court should at least limit Boasberg's order to the vie immigrations who brought the challenge, which the judge expanded to include anyone else who would be covered by Trump's policy. Any migrant can individually bring a claim, Harris argued, but only in Texas where they're being held, and only along narrower gerunds.
..... Twenty-seven Republican attorneys general backed the administration, telling the Supreme Court they "finally have a welcome partner in the Presidency willing to fight for the safety and security of the American people."
..... but a group of conservatives and former government officials, including former federal appeals court judge Michael Luttig and former CIA Director Michael Haydon, said the issue was whether the president or the judiciary has the final say on what powers Congress gave the president under the Alien enemies Act.
..... "Judicial review is intrinsic to the essential checks and balances the Framers enshrined in our constitutional system," they said in a filing let by the State Democracy Defenders Fund.
..... And attorneys for the immigrates who initiated the challenge called the administration's request "extraordinary."
..... "The President's effort to shoehorn a criminal gang into the (Alien enemies Act), on a migration-equals-invasion theory, is completely at odds with the limited delegation of wartime authority Congress chose to give him through the statute," they wrote.
..... The
judge's temporary pause on deportations is the only thing preventing the immigrants from being sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador, "perhaps never to be seen again," attorneys for the immigrates said. The pause doesn't hurt the government because the immigrants remain in custody as the litigation continues, they added.
..... Contributing: Reuters