The Supreme Court ruled this afternoon to keep in place its block on President Trump’s deportations of (alleged) Venezuelan gang members under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime after their ACLU lawyers said the government was set to remove the men without judicial review in violation of a prior order by the justices.
The Supreme Court has previously issued two orders stemming from those cases.
Justices agreed that the president could rely on the centuries-old wartime law to remove immigrants from the country – provided they first have an opportunity to challenge those claims in court – and then temporarily blocked the government from deporting another group of Venezuelans in Texas while their lawyers scrambled to challenge the allegations against them.
In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump stated that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”