Pressmediaofindia
Related Articles
21-04-2025
WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Saturday temporarily barred the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members under a rarely used wartime law, but the government urged the justices to lift their order.
The court issued the decision after lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union asked it to intervene on an emergency basis, saying dozens of Venezuelan migrants faced imminent deportation without the judicial review the justices previously ordered.
“The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the justices said earlier in a brief, unsigned decision.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito publicly dissented from the decision, issued around 12:55 am. The Trump administration filed a response on Saturday afternoon urging the justices, once they review the matter further, to formally reject the ACLU’s request on the migrants’ behalf.
The White House responded that President Donald Trump would stay the course in his immigration crackdown but gave no immediate indication that the administration would defy the Supreme Court, appearing for now to avert a potential constitutional crisis between coequal branches of government.
Although it was unclear where the Venezuelan migrants were headed, the Trump administration already has deported to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador more than 200 Venezuelan and Salvadoran men it claims are gang members.
The deportees included Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran immigrant whom the administration admitted was removed by mistake, igniting an outcry over its immigration policy.
Many of the migrants’ lawyers and family members say they were not gang members and had no chance to dispute the government’s assertion that they were.
“We are confident in the lawfulness of the Administration’s actions and in ultimately prevailing against an onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of terrorist aliens than those of the American people,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
The case has raised questions about whether Trump, who has shown a willingness at times to defy court decisions since returning to office on January 20, will comply with limits set by the nation’s highest court.
The high court majority issued Saturday’s stay after ACLU lawyers filed urgent requests for immediate action in multiple courts, including the Supreme Court, after reporting that some of the men already had been loaded aboard buses and were told they were to be deported.
The ACLU said the administration was poised to deport the men using a 1798 law that historically has been employed only in wartime without affording them a realistic opportunity to contest their removal as the Supreme Court had ordered.
U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, in a written filing, asked the court to lift its temporary order halting the deportations to first allow lower courts to resolve the “adequacy of notice that designated enemy aliens receive.”
Barring that action, Sauer wrote, the court should clarify its order to say that it “does not preclude the government from removing detainees pursuant to authorities other than the Alien Enemies Act.”
Sauer said the government provided advance notice with “adequate time” to the detainees prior to starting deportations though he did not say how much time was given. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
