Key points
- Supreme Court requires due process for deportations under 1789 wartime law
- Trump says he supports removal of “bad people”
- Trump has resisted court orders, raising prospect of a constitutional crisis
ISLAMABAD: The US Supreme Court early on Saturday paused the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan men in immigration custody after their lawyers claimed they were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.
“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, early issued early on Saturday morning.
US President Donald Trump invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA) last month to begin rounding up Venezuelan migrants accused of belonging to the Tren de Aragua gang before expelling them to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.
Constitutional crisis
Trump says he supports the removal of “bad people” and has resisted court orders, raising the prospect of a constitutional crisis.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly dissented from the decision, according to Reuters.
The dispute centres on dozens of Venezuelans held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas.
The obscure law has only previously been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, according to AFP.
Emergency filing
The American Civil Liberties Union said in its emergency filing on Friday night that the group of Venezuelans currently held in Texas had been told “they will be imminently removed under the AEA, as soon as tonight.”
Attorneys for several of the Venezuelans previously deported had said their clients were not members of Tren de Aragua, had committed no crimes and were targeted largely on the basis of their tattoos.
Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to expel millions of undocumented migrants, has accused Venezuela of “perpetrating an invasion” of the United States through the entry of alleged Tren de Aragua members.
