WASHINGTON (CN) — The Supreme Court freed President Donald Trump from a restraining order grounding deportation flights on Monday, allowing the administration to continue deporting migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.
In an apparent 5-4 order, the court sided with the government because the migrants filed their appeal in D.C. instead of Texas.
“For ‘core habeas petitions,’ ‘jurisdiction lies in only one district: the district of confinement,’” the majority wrote in a per curiam opinion. “The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett dissented, rebuking their male colleagues for rewarding “the government’s efforts to erode the rule of law.”
The dissenting justices said requiring each migrant to file a habeas action exposed immigrants across the nation to severe and irreparable harm. Sotomayor, a Barack Obama appointee, said the majority’s requirement could have life-or-death consequences.
“Individuals who are unable to secure counsel, or who cannot timely appeal an adverse judgment rendered by a habeas court, face the prospect of removal directly into the perilous conditions of El Salvador’s CECOT, where detainees suffer egregious human rights abuses,” Sotomayor wrote in an opinion joined by her colleagues. “Anyone the government mistakenly deports in its piecemeal and rushed implementation of the challenged proclamation will face the same grave risks.”
The Justice Department asked for emergency intervention to restart controversial migrant transfers to a notoriously dangerous prison in El Salvador, calling the deportations essential to protect national security and maintain foreign relationships.
Last month, the administration sent 137 migrants to Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo over their supposed ties to the Tren de Aragua gang. According to the administration, Tren de Aragua is a de facto arm of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s regime; they say Maduro coordinates and relies on the gang to harm U.S. citizens and destabilize democratic nations.
Sotomayor stressed the danger the migrants could face in the infamous megaprison, stating that detainees are denied communication with their families and lawyers.
“El Salvador has boasted that inmates in CECOT 'will never leave,' and plaintiffs present evidence that ‘inmates are rarely allowed to leave their cells, have no regular access to drinking water or adequate food, sleep standing up because of overcrowding, and are held in cells where they do not see sunlight for days,'" Sotomayor wrote. “One scholar attests that an estimated 375 detainees have died in Salvadoran prisons since March 2022.”
The majority dismissed their dissenting colleagues' “rhetoric,” suggesting that the justices only narrowly decided which court would resolve challenges to removal orders.
Civil rights groups representing the migrants say those claims are unfounded and based on unrelated tattoos.
The Justice Department admitted that one Salvadoran migrant with asylum protections was sent to his home country’s mega prison due to “an administrative error,” and despite immigration officials' awareness that an immigration judge had ruled he could not be deported to El Salvador. Abrego Garcia is married to a U.S. citizen, with whom he has a 5-year-old child; he sought protection in the U.S. in 2019 under the United Nations Convention Against Torture.
Under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, the president can detain and deport natives and citizens of an enemy nation. It has been used only three times in the nation’s history: during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II. President Franklin Roosevelt infamously ordered the internment of Japanese Americans under the statute.
Trump asserted broad Article II authority under the act, claiming that federal courts had no role in reviewing his actions.
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