1 week Ago By USA TODAY
WASHINGTON − The Trump administration can resume speedy deportation of certain immigrants without a hearing, the Supreme Court said on Monday, in a victory for President Donald Trump ’s hardline approach to immigration. The court agreed to the Justice Department's request that the government be allowed to use a 1798 law, the Alien Enemies Act , to deport immigrants it says are members of a Venezuelan crime gang. The administration says the law gives presidents “near-blanket authority” to detain and deport any noncitizen from a country at war with the U.
S. But an appeals court said the invasion had to come from a foreign government rather than a gang. Chief U.
S. District Judge James Boasberg had ruled that alleged members of Tren de Aragua , also known as TdA, deserve a hearing for a chance to deny they belong to the gang, but the administration successfully argued to the high court that it should be allowed to continue deportations while the government's use of the law is being litigated. More: Trump's team acknowledges 'administrative error' led to deportation to El Salvador Acting Solicitor General Sarah Harris wrote that the case provides a clear choice between whether the president or the judiciary will set policy for sensitive national security cases.
“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President,” Harris wrote . “The republic cannot afford a different choice.” She said the Supreme Court should at least limit Boasberg's order to the five immigrants who brought the challenge, which the judge expanded to include anyone else who would be covered by Trump's policy.
Any migrant can individually bring a claim, Harris argued, but only in Texas where they're being held, and only along narrower grounds. Twenty-seven Republican attorneys general backed the administration, telling the Supreme Court they "finally have a welcome partner in the Presidency willing to fight for the safety and security of the American people." More: Calf.
judge blocks Noem from halting temporary immigration program for 600,000 Venezuelans But a group of conservatives and former government officials, including former federal appeals court judge Michael Luttig and former CIA Director Michael Hayden, said the issue was whether the president or the judiciary has the final say on what powers Congress gave the president under the Alien Enemies Act. "Judicial review is intrinsic to the essential checks and balances the Framers enshrined in our constitutional system," they said in a filing led by the State Democracy Defenders Fund . And attorneys for the immigrants who initiated the challenge called the administration's request "extraordinary.
" "The President's effort to shoehorn a criminal gang into the (Alien Enemies Act), on a migration-equals-invasion theory, is completely at odds with the limited delegation of wartime authority Congress chose to give him through the statute," they wrote . The judge's temporary pause on deportations is the only thing preventing the immigrants from being sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador, "perhaps never to be seen again," they said. And the pause doesn't hurt the government because the immigrants remain in the government's custody as the litigation continues, they added.
Boasberg had been scheduled to hold an April 8 hearing on whether to extend his temporary pause into a longer-lasting preliminary injunction. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Trump can resume deportations under Alien Enemies Act: Supreme Court.
