The Supreme Court on Saturday temporarily stopped the deportation of Venezuelans being held in northern Texas under an old wartime law from the 1700s.
In a short statement, the court told the Trump administration not to deport any Venezuelans from the Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.”
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito disagreed with the decision.
The court acted after an emergency request from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued that immigration officials seemed ready to restart deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. Earlier in April, the Supreme Court had said deportations could only go ahead if the people being removed had a chance to present their side in court and were given “a reasonable time” to do so.
“We are deeply relieved that the Court has temporarily blocked the removals. These individuals were in imminent danger of spending the rest of their lives in a brutal Salvadoran prison without ever having had any due process,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email.
Later on Saturday, the Trump administration filed papers asking the court to change its decision. Press secretary Karoline Leavitt posted on X, saying, “We are confident we will ultimately prevail against the onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists.”
On Friday, two federal judges did not stop the deportations, even though one of them said the situation raised serious questions. Early Saturday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals also refused to issue an order to protect the detainees from being removed.
Venezuelan migrants deported from the US arrive at Simon Bolivar International AirportThe ACLU had already taken legal action to stop the deportation of two Venezuelans in the Bluebonnet facility and asked for a broader order to stop the removal of other immigrants in the area under the Alien Enemies Act.
In an urgent request early Friday, the ACLU said that immigration officials were accusing other Venezuelan men in Bluebonnet of being part of the Tren de Aragua gang, which would make them targets under President Donald Trump’s use of the old law.
This law has only been used three other times in U.S. history. The most recent time was during World War II when Japanese-Americans were placed in internment camps. The Trump administration said the law gave them the authority to deport people quickly they said were part of the gang, no matter their immigration status.
After a unanimous decision from the Supreme Court on April 9, federal judges in Colorado, New York, and southern Texas gave orders to stop removals under the Alien Enemies Act until the government creates a process for people to present their cases in court.
However, no judge had issued such an order in the area of Texas where Bluebonnet is located, about 24 miles north of Abilene.
U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who Trump appointed, this week said he would not stop the government from removing the two men named in the ACLU lawsuit because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) promised in sworn statements that they would not be deported right away.
He also did not give a wider order to stop the removal of all Venezuelans in the area under the act, saying removals had not yet begun.
But in its filing on Friday, the ACLU submitted statements from three different immigration lawyers who said their clients in Bluebonnet had received documents saying they were part of Tren de Aragua and could be deported as soon as Saturday. One lawyer, Karene Brown, said her client, known by initials, was asked to sign papers in English even though he only spoke Spanish.
“ICE informed F.G.M. that these papers were coming from the President, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it,” Brown wrote.
Gelernt told District Judge James E. Boasberg in a Friday hearing in Washington, D.C., that the government had first moved Venezuelans to a facility in south Texas to deport them. But when a judge blocked deportations from that area, they started sending them to Bluebonnet, where no such block existed. He said witnesses saw the men being put on buses Friday night to go to the airport.
Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White HouseSince Hendrix didn’t grant the emergency order the ACLU asked for, the group turned to Judge Boasberg, who had stopped deportations in March. But the Supreme Court had said that deportation orders could only come from judges where the immigrants were being held. Because of that, Boasberg said on Friday he couldn’t do anything.
“I’m sympathetic to everything you’re saying,” Boasberg told Gelernt. “I just don’t think I have the power to do anything about it.”
This week, Boasberg found there was enough reason to believe the Trump administration may have broken the law by ignoring his original deportation ban. He was concerned that the documents ICE gave to those being held did not clearly say they had the right to fight their deportation in court, which the Supreme Court had said was necessary.
Drew Ensign, a lawyer for the Justice Department, disagreed. He said people facing deportation would have “a minimum” of 24 hours to challenge it in court. He said there were no flights planned for Friday night and didn’t know of any on Saturday, but the Department of Homeland Security said it still might deport people then.
ICE said it would not comment on the case.
Also on Friday, a judge in Massachusetts made permanent his earlier order blocking the government from deporting people who have lost their appeals to countries other than their own, unless they are told where they are going and given a chance to object if they could face torture or death there.
Some of the Venezuelans affected by Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act have already been sent to El Salvador and placed in its well-known main prison.
