Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Let It Deport Venezuelan Illegal Immigrants Under Wartime Law

Justices have been asked to stay lower court orders.

FILE PHOTO: A view of the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington, U.S. June 29, 2024. REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt/File Photo

The Trump administration on March 28 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a case involving President Donald Trump’s declaration of an invasion by a terrorist gang.

Administration lawyers asked justices to stay lower court orders, which would enable officials to resume deportations of illegal immigrants under a law called the Alien Enemies Act.

An appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court order that prevents the administration from deporting members of the Tren de Aragua gang under Trump’s invocation, unless officials have another legitimate reason to do so, such as an administrative judge’s removal order.

“That order is forcing the United States to harbor individuals whom national-security officials have identified as members of a foreign terrorist organization bent upon grievously harming Americans,” lawyers for the government told the Supreme Court on Friday.

The situation also “jeopardize[s] sensitive diplomatic negotiations and delicate national-security operations,” they added.

Trump said in a recent proclamation that Tren de Aragua has been perpetrating “an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States.” He directed officials to apprehend and deport members of the gang.

Two planes carrying gang members took off on March 15 for El Salvador. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that day ordered no additional removals unless they were based on reasons besides the Alien Enemies Act invocation.

Boasberg is considering whether to extend his temporary restraining order, which is currently set to expire on March 29. Lawyers representing Venezuelan nationals told the judge in a filing this week that he should keep the order in place because Trump’s proclamation “improperly overrides statutory protections for noncitizens seeking humanitarian relief by subjecting them to removal without meaningful consideration of their claims.”

A majority of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in its opinion this week said that “there is neither jurisdiction nor reason for this court to interfere at this very preliminary stage or to allow the government to singlehandedly moot the Plaintiffs’ claims by immediately removing them beyond the reach of their lawyers or the court.”

U.S. Circuit Judge Justin Walker said in a dissent that the plaintiffs had wrongly filed the case in Washington, despite being confined elsewhere.

“Because the Plaintiffs sued in the District of Columbia, the Government is likely to succeed in its challenge to the district court’s orders,” Walker said. “The Government has also shown that the district court’s orders threaten irreparable harm to delicate negotiations with foreign powers on matters concerning national security. And that harm, plus the asserted public interest in swiftly removing dangerous aliens, outweighs the Plaintiffs’ desire to file a suit in the District of Columbia that they concede they could have brought in Texas.”

Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday asked for a response by 10 a.m. on April 1 from lawyers for the Venezuelans to the Trump administration’s emergency application.

Trump has been calling for the impeachment of Boasberg, among other judges who have ruled against him.

Roberts, in a rare statement earlier in March, said: “For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose.”