U.S. Supreme Court blocks some Alien Enemies Act deportations

(The Center Square) – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday extended a previous block on President Donald Trump's plan to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members detained in northern Texas. 

The high court's 7-2 decision temporarily prevents the government from invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport immigrants to a notoriously violent prison in El Salvador. The unsigned opinion was critical of the administration's efforts to give Venezuelans due process.

"The Government has represented elsewhere that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador, where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention. The detainees' interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty," the decision noted. "Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster."

The decision sends the case back to the Fifth Circuit.

"It is not optimal for this Court, far removed from the circumstances on the ground, to determine in the first instance the precise process necessary to satisfy the Constitution in this case," according to the decision. 

It also noted: "We decide today only that the detainees are entitled to more notice than was given on April 18."

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The high court did not evaluate the case's central issue: Whether the Trump administration can deport people under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Alito said that no circumstances allowed the Supreme Court to get involved this early in the case.

Trump has said it isn't possible to have trials for every person targeted for deportation.

"We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years," the president wrote on Truth Social last month. "We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country."

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