The U.S. Supreme Court temporarily suspends the use of the 18th-century law to deport immigrants.

WashingtonThe United States Supreme Court has temporarily suspended the application of the Enemies of Aliens Act (Enemies of Aliens) to carry out deportations of immigrants. The temporary freeze was triggered by 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 immigrants' lawyers argued the imminent risk of their clients being expelled from the country without going through a judicial process required by the court itself 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," states the Supreme Court ruling, which is not assigned to any of the justices. However, two justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—both conservative—opposed the deportations.

Although the Supreme Court's decision seems contradictory to last week's ruling, which does supported the deportation of Venezuelans under the Foreign Enemies Act, follows the line of argument that opened that first ruling. The previous ruling addressed the precautionary measure that federal judge James Boasberg had imposed on Trump's invocation of the 1789 law to deport all individuals accused of belonging to the criminal gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13. Even so, in that ruling, the Supreme Court avoided ruling on the substance of the matter—whether or not it is legal to use a law of war to deport migrants—and established that anyone prosecuted under the Alien Enemies Act must have a "reasonable period" to "effectively" challenge the application before expulsion. In other words, they must be guaranteed due process, something that the more than 200 Venezuelans and Salvadorans deported to the CECOT mega-prison on March 15 did not have.

Procedural Guarantees

The approval was celebrated by both the White House—because they believed it was in favor of federal judges who cannot dictate to the executive branch what to do—and by immigration lawyers—because it made clear the need for procedural safeguards in deportation proceedings and opened the door for the Supreme Court to rule on 1789. In Saturday's new ruling, the Supreme Court did precisely that: temporarily suspend the application of the law because the Trump administration had ignored these conditions of offering minimum procedural safeguards to some 50 Venezuelans it presumably wanted to deport to El Salvador this weekend. The American Civil Liberties Union had already obtained court orders in recent days prohibiting similar deportations under the Enemies of Aliens Act in other places such as New York, Denver, and Brownsville, Texas.

The judicial setback coincides with the White House's direct confrontation with another Supreme Court order in which asked the government to "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was deported "by mistake" in El Salvador with the March 15 flight. Although the administration acknowledged its error, it has now escalated its position and has gone from excusing itself by saying it has no power to return him. to say that he will not return it. The latest tense episode occurred when Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen managed to meet with Abrego Garcia in El Salvador yesterday despite obstacles imposed by the Nayib Bukele administration. After the image became public, the White House changed its story and began claiming, without evidence, that Abrego is a member of the MS-13 gang, contradicting the court document in which the Justice Department recognized the expulsion of the man—who had been protected from deportation since 2019—as an "administrative error." In fact, the Justice Department fired the official who prepared the document acknowledging the error.