On Friday, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court for permission to resume deportations of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, invoking the 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act. The appeal comes after U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg temporarily barred the government from using the law in question for the first time since World War II, to justify the deportation of hundreds of people, calling the Tren de Aragua gang an “invasion force”.
At the same time, acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote in the court filing that federal judges should not have meddled in the matter. “Here, the district court’s orders have rebuffed the President’s judgments as to how to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations,”
“We will urge the Supreme Court to preserve the status quo to give the courts time to hear this case”, Lee Gelernt, the lead attorney representing the migrants, said instead, “so that more individuals are not sent off to a notorious foreign prison without any process, based on an unprecedented and unlawful use of a wartime authority.”
The Alien Enemies Act allows the administration to deport foreign nationals without allowing them to be heard by a magistrate. Boasberg ruled that immigrants facing deportation must have the opportunity to challenge their designation as alleged gang members.
In mid-March, the U.S. government launched a large deportation operation, transporting more than 200 Venezuelans, accused of being TdA components, to the maximum security CECOT prison in El Salvador. ICE later revealed that many of these individuals have no criminal record of any kind, at least in the United States.
After the federal court’s decision, which stopped the deportations at least temporarily, Trump and his allies called for Boasberg’s impeachment. However, Chief Justice John Roberts himself explained that this would not be an “appropriate” decision.
