The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily suspends the use of the Enemies of Aliens Act to enforce deportations.

BarcelonaThe United States Supreme Court has temporarily suspended the application of the Alien Enemies Act to carry out deportations of immigrants. The temporary freeze was activated following the case of a group of Venezuelans detained in Texas whom the Donald Trump administration wanted to deport on charges of belonging to the Tren de Aragua criminal gang—which the government has classified as a terrorist group, along with the Salvadoran MS-13. The migrants' lawyers argued that their clients faced the imminent risk of being expelled from the country without going through a judicial process required by the Supreme Court justices themselves in a previous ruling.

"The government is directed not to expel from the United States any member of the putative class of detainees until further order of this Court," reads the Supreme Court ruling, which is not assigned to any of the court's justices. However, two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—both with conservative profiles—opposed the deportations.

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This Friday, the Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union filed an urgent lawsuit in several courts across the country, including the Supreme Court, the highest court in the US. The lawyers wanted to stop the expulsion from the US of a group of Venezuelan citizens detained at the Bluebonnet detention center in the state of Texas, accused of being part of the Tren de Aragua criminal organization.

By declaring this organization a terrorist entity, the federal administration argues that it ended up empowered to apply the controversial Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798 and historically used only during times of war. Trump ended up using the law to "hot-fix" migrants identified as members of this criminal organization, regardless of their immigration status and without complying with the necessary protocol.

The bar association asserts that the speed with which they were about to be deported prevented the detainees from having a realistic opportunity to defend themselves before the authorities and avoid expulsion. In this regard, the Supreme Court validated the use of 18th-century law to expel immigrants in a recent ruling, but provided that those affected had sufficient time to properly defend their case in court if they disagreed with the deportation. According to this Saturday's new ruling, the Trump administration allegedly ignored these conditions imposed by the Supreme Court.