The U.S. Supreme Court has issued an emergency order halting the Trump administration’s planned deportation of Venezuelan men accused of gang affiliation, citing concerns over due process.
In a decision released early Saturday, the Court stated, “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 pause follows urgent appeals from American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers, who argued that the detainees—held at Texas’s Bluebonnet Detention Facility—were at imminent risk of removal without the judicial review previously mandated by the justices.
The administration had invoked the rarely used 1798 Alien Enemies Act to justify the deportations, a law historically employed only during wartime. The ACLU reported that some migrants had already been loaded onto buses for deportation, raising alarms about the lack of opportunity to contest their removal.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the decision. The White House has not commented on the Court’s ruling.
