The Supreme Court on Saturday blocked, for now, the deportations of any Venezuelans held in northern Texas under an 18th century wartime law.
In a brief order, the court directed the Trump administration not to remove Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
The high court acted in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union contending that immigration authorities appeared to be moving to restart removals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The Supreme Court had said earlier in April that deportations could proceed only if those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.
“We are deeply relieved that the Court has temporarily blocked the removals. These individuals were in imminent danger of spending the rest of their lives in a brutal Salvadoran prison without ever having had any due process,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email.
On Friday, two federal judges refused to step in as lawyers for the men launched a desperate legal campaign to prevent their deportation, even as one judge said the case raised legitimate concerns. Early Saturday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to issue an order protecting the detainees from being deported.
The administration is expected to return to the Supreme Court quickly in an effort to persuade the justices to lift their temporary order.
The ACLU had already sued to block deportations of two Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet facility and sought an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the Alien Enemies Act.
In an emergency filing early Friday, the ACLU warned that immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan men held there of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, which would make them subject to President Donald Trump’s use of the act.
The act has only been invoked three previous times in U.S. history, most recently during World War II to hold Japanese-American civilians in internment camps. The Trump administration contended it gave them power to swiftly remove immigrants they identified as members of the gang, regardless of their immigration status.
Following the unanimous high court order on April 9, federal judges in Colorado, New York and southern Texas promptly issued orders barring removal of detainees under the AEA until the administration provides a process for them to make claims in court.
But there had been no such order issued in the area of Texas that covers Bluebonnet, which is located 24 miles north of Abilene in the far northern end of the state.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, this week declined to bar the administration from removing the two men identified in the ACLU lawsuit because Immigration and Customs Enforcement filed sworn declarations that they would not be immediately deported. He also balked at issuing a broader order prohibiting removal of all Venezuelans in the area under the act because he said removals hadn’t started yet.
But the ACLU’s Friday filing included sworn declarations from three separate immigration lawyers who said their clients in Bluebonnet were given paperwork indicating they were members of Tren de Aragua and could be deported by Saturday. In one case, immigration lawyer Karene Brown said her client, identified by initials, was told to sign papers in English even though the client only spoke Spanish.
“ICE informed F.G.M. that these papers were coming from the President, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it,” Brown wrote.
Gelernt said in a Friday evening hearing before District Judge James E. Boasberg in Washington, D.C., that the administration initially moved Venezuelans to its south Texas immigration facility for deportation. But since a judge banned deportations in that area, it has funneled them to the Bluebonnet facility, where no such order exists. He said witnesses reported the men were being loaded on buses Friday evening to be taken to the airport.
