Legal experts were quick to parse the U.S. Supreme Court’s “massively significant” order prohibiting the Trump administration from carrying out deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
In a highly unusual early Saturday morning ruling — the first and only Saturday order issued this term — the nation’s high court tersely ordered the government “not to remove” any immigrant detainees scheduled for deportation flights in the Northern District of Texas.
“[T]he Court didn’t wait at all,” Georgetown University Law Prof. Steve Vladeck said on his blog. “This may seem like a technical point, but it underscores how seriously the Court, or at least a majority of it, took the urgency of the matter.”
The law professor pointed out that the justices did not wait for an appellate court to rule on the issue or give the government time to respond to the emergency request before issuing the order.
The order is the latest in a series of parries and thrusts involving the Trump administration’s use of an obscure wartime law.
In mid-March, the government invoked the AEA. Despite being immediately enjoined by US District Court Chief Judge James E. Boasberg, officials ignored the court order and flew two planes full of immigrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, one of the men on one of those flights, was barred from being deported to El Salvador by an explicit — and separate — court order.
While the justices overturned Boasberg’s national injunction, they also barred the government from conducting any additional deportation flights under the AEA without due process. To that end, the court prescribed writs of habeas corpus in relevant district courts as the next step for detainees challenging alleged AEA deportations.
A few days later, in a separate case, the justices unanimously ordered the government to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from the torture-plagued Salvadoran detention facility.
However, in the last week, President Donald Trump and high-ranking White House officials have misconstrued — and possibly mocked — the high court’s decision as a 9-0 victory for the administration. Meanwhile, at least two other courts, one appellate and one district, pointed out that the rulings were actually defeats for the government, albeit minor ones.
Simultaneously, attorneys across the country have been following the high court’s lead by filing class-action habeas petitions in jurisdictions where immigrants are believed to be housed in anticipation of potential third-country deportations under the AEA.
Such a filing was made in Texas on Wednesday, and the court system worked quickly to get the emergency application to the Supreme Court by Friday. Within hours, at least five — possibly seven — justices voted to halt pending AEA removals of immigrants in North Texas.
The plaintiffs in the case, represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), saw fit to seek extraordinary intervention after the district court judge denied their initial request for a temporary restraining order.
On Thursday, U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, appointed by President Donald Trump during his first term, denied the motion for a restraining order, citing a statement from Department of Justice attorneys that none of the detained plaintiffs faced a “imminent risk of summary removal” under the AEA.
That promise may not be worth much to the Supreme Court, according to legal commentator and attorney Ed Whelan, a former clerk for late Justice Antonin Scalia who assisted Justice Brett Kavanaugh during his contentious confirmation hearings.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), Whelan described the order as “extraordinary” and suggested that there was only one possible explanation.
“[T]he Court does not trust the Trump administration to abide by its promise to the district court,” the justice wrote. “And given how unworthy of trust the Trump administration has proven to be, that’s an ample explanation.”
Vladeck appeared to agree with this estimate.
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As reports of renewed AEA flights circulated this week, the ACLU returned to Boasberg on Friday — the original AEA case — and requested another temporary restraining order.
During a hastily scheduled hearing, the DOJ hedged its bets.
“I spoke with DHS, and they are unaware of any current plans for flights tomorrow,” Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign stated. “I have also been told to say that they reserve the right to remove people tomorrow.”
Boasberg declined to grant relief, but Vladeck believes the justices were well aware of the government’s position.
“In a world in which a majority of the justices were willing to take these kinds of representations at face value, there might’ve been no need to intervene overnight Friday evening; the justices could’ve taken at least all day Saturday to try to sort things out before handing down their decision,” according to the law professor.
“The Court appears to be finally getting the message—and, as a result, issuing rulings with none of the wiggle room we saw in the J.G.G. and Abrego Garcia decisions last week. That is a massively significant development in and of itself, especially if it is not a one-time occurrence.
