Supreme Court Allows US to Deport Venezuelans Under Alien Enemies Act

An appeals court had rejected Trump’s request to stay Judge James Boasberg’s orders blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.

Salvadoran prison guards escort alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and the MS-13 gang recently deported by the U.S. government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, on March 30, 2025. Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Reuters

The Supreme Court granted President Donald Trump’s request to halt a federal judge’s orders preventing his administration from using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang.

“We grant the application and vacate the [temporary restraining orders],” the court said in a per curiam, or unsigned opinion, on April 7. The decision applied to two original restraining orders and an extension issued last month by U.S. District Judge James Boasberg.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor penned a dissent that was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Justice Amy Coney Barrett partially joined Sotomayor’s dissent.

The unsigned opinion agreed with the administration’s position that the proper avenue for potential deportees to obtain due process was through habeas corpus, which plaintiffs abandoned early in the case. It also echoed concerns D.C. Circuit Judge Justin Walker expressed about the plaintiffs potentially bringing the case in the wrong federal district court.

“Detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” the Supreme Court opinion read. It added that while individuals were entitled to an opportunity to challenge their removal, the proper venue was “the district of confinement,” or where the plaintiffs were confined.

The court stated that “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

Both Sotomayor and Jackson, who issued a separate dissent, argued that the court was acting too quickly and should have considered the issue more carefully.

“The majority flouts well-established limits on its jurisdiction, creates new law on the emergency docket, and elides the serious threat our intervention poses to the lives of individual detainees,” Sotomayor wrote.

The decision came days after the Supreme Court granted the administration’s request to block a lower court order halting its plan to freeze education grants over concerns about diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Quoting Kagan’s dissent in that case, Sotomayor said the court proceeded with “bare-bones briefing, no argument, and scarce time for reflection.”

On social media platform X, Attorney General Pam Bondi celebrated the Supreme Court’s decision, calling it a “landmark victory for the rule of law.”

“An activist judge in Washington, DC does not have the jurisdiction to seize control of President Trump’s authority to conduct foreign policy and keep the American people safe,” she said.

Bondi has since submitted a request to the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia for the case to be dismissed.

On TruthSocial, Trump posted: “The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself.”

“A great day for justice in America!” he added in all caps.

The decision came after the administration and plaintiffs in the initial case filed dueling briefs to the justices.

Acting U.S. Solicitor General Sarah Harris told the Supreme Court that the “case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country—the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through [temporary restraining orders].”

Trump appealed Boasberg’s orders to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which declined this past week to grant that relief.

The plaintiffs, which included a group of Venezuelan nationals, told the court on April 1 that the district court’s block “ensures that, based on an unprecedented peacetime invocation of the AEA, additional individuals are not hurried off to a brutal foreign prison, potentially for the rest of their lives, without judicial process.”