0
0
On May 16, 2025, the Supreme Court blocked President Trump from moving forward with deportations under The 1798 Alien Enemies Act for a group of immigrants in northern Texas, siding with Venezuelans who feared they were poised for imminent removal under the sweeping wartime authority.
The decision is a significant loss for Trump, who wants to use the law to speed deportations – and avoid the kind of review normally required before removing people from the country. But the decision is also temporary and the underlying legal fight over the president’s invocation will continue in multiple federal courts across the country.
The justices sent the case at issue back to an appeals court to decide the underlying questions in the case, including whether the president’s move is legal and, if it is, how much notice the migrants targeted under the act should receive.
Two justices – Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito – publicly noted their dissent.
The court’s opinion was notably pointed about how the government was attempting to handle the removals and also how US District Judge James Hendrix had dealt with the case at an earlier stage.
The court referenced another case that had reached it previously, that of the Maryland man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly removed to El Salvador. The court noted that the Trump administration has represented that it is “unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador.”
Given that, the court said, “the detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty.” In other words, the court was saying it is important to get the legal questions correct before people are removed, potentially, forever.
The court added that the way the Trump administration was handling the removals did not “pass muster.” Specifically, the justices pointed to notice of only 24 hours that was “devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal.”
The Supreme Court sent the case back to the New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals for further review, saying in its order that the appeals court erred in dismissing the detainees’ appeal.
The court also appeared to criticize how Hendrix, whom Trump nominated to the bench in his first term, had handled the case. Hendrix declined to halt the removals.
“Here the District Court’s inaction – not for 42 minutes but for 14 hours and 28 minutes – had the practical effect of refusing an injunction to detainees facing an imminent threat of severe, irreparable harm,” the court wrote.
