Washington – The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that the Trump administration can use a law in times of war to deport the alleged members of a gang of foreign crimes, but only if they are given the right to challenge the government's claim.
By a 5-4 vote, the court set aside the orders of the judges in Washington, who said the Trump administration had exceeded its power.
The decision is a victory for Trump and the reverse for federal judges who tried to verify control of the president's power.
Most of the courts, in an unmarked opinion, said that a group of alleged members of Venezuelan gangs face the deportation of El Salvador can appeal, but only before a federal judge in Texas, where they are retained.
“The rights of detainees against summary elimination are not currently in dispute,” the court said. “The detainees must receive a notice after the notice of this order that they are subject to the elimination … the notice must be given within a reasonable time and in such a way that it really allows them to seek relief of the habeas in the right place before such elimination occurs.”
This was the Trump administration response position.
Initially he had said that these detained men had no right to appeal because the president had the power of war under the law of Alien enemies of 1798 to deport “hostile” aliens.
The court did not govern directly on that issue, but said that detainees can only appeal when they are detained, which in this case is southern Texas.
“Today's order … confirms that detainees subjects to elimination orders under the alien enemies law have the right to notify and an opportunity to challenge their elimination. The only question is which court will resolve that challenge,” said the majority.
The president of the Supreme Court John G. Roberts Jr. and Judges Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh formed the majority.
Monday's order does not focus on the almost 200 men who were deported to El Salvador on March 15. Instead, it establishes the legal rules for the remaining detainees who can face deportation.
In dissent were Judges Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett.
“The government's behavior in this litigation represents an extraordinary threat to the rule of law,” Sotomayor wrote in dissent. “That most of this court now rewards the Government for its behavior with a discretionary equitable relief is indefensible. We, as a nation and a court of justice, should be better than this.”
Jackson said he questioned the “choice of the majority of intervening on the eve of the preliminary injection hearing of the District Court without programming arguments or receiving information on merits. This flying approach at the night of the work of the Supreme Court is not only wrong. It is also dangerous.”
He referred to Judge James Boasberg, who was considering issuing a preliminary judicial order to block more deportations.
According to the United States Immigration Law, the Government can deport migrants with criminal records.
But Trump and the advisors decided to avoid that legal system and, on the other hand, order the rapid and almost secret deportation of hundreds of Venezuelans who had tattoos who suggested that they were members of a criminal gang.
They claimed a war power for the president invoking the law of Alien enemies of 1798, adopted when President John Adams feared a war with France, which had been taking US ships.
When there is a “declared war between the United States and any foreign nation … or any invasion … is threatened by any foreign government,” he says that the president can make “a public proclamation of the event” and order that the “subjects of the hostile nation” are “apprehended … and eliminated as alien enemies.”
The law was invoked during the War of 1812 and the World Wars I and II.
On March 15, he was invoked for the fourth time when Trump, without public notice, signed a proclamation “regarding the invasion of the United States by Train of Aragua”, a criminal terrorist gang that said it was “to carry out an irregular war and perform hostile actions against the United States.”
According to this claim, administration officials were preparing to fly more than 200 Texas Venezuelans to El Salvador when a federal judge in Washington hurriedly summoned a hearing on Saturday afternoon.
The Aclu lawyer Lee Gellnt, sued in the name of five men who said they were not members of the crime gang, but feared they were about to be deported to a brutal prison in El Salvador.
Boasberg questioned the legal basis for deportations, and issued a temporary restriction order to suspend them if they were based on the statement that they were “alien enemies.”
But the impact of his order was limited.
While the five men who sued remained in Texas, the three planets of prisoners were sent to El Salvador and shown behind the shaved head bars and their tattoos without a shirt on display.
Some of the deported men had “final extraction orders” under immigration laws, but more than hundreds of others were deported as alien enemies.
The judge had problems for the administration to have largely ignored his order, but Trump's lawyers said they were concerned about which the judge sought to interfere with the president's power of war to protect the security of the nation.
They appealed to the DC circuit court that sought that the judge's order will be annulled, but lost by a 2-1 vote.
Appealing to the Supreme Court, Trump's lawyers said the judges had no authority to file on the way.
“This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to perform sensitive operations related to national security in this country: the president … or the Judiciary,” wrote Trump's interim lawyer, General Sarah Harris, in his appeal. “The Constitution provides a clear response: the president.”
The Aclu lawyer urged the court to maintain the restriction order in place.
“It is increasingly clear that many of the men (perhaps the majority) were not really members” of the crime gang, but “instead they were mistakenly designated” due to their tattoos, Gell wrote in response to the appeal.
If the court throws the judge's order, he said, “it would allow the government to immediately start anyone who unilaterally declares a member of a criminal gang to a brutal foreign prison.”
