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Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a dissenting opinion after the Supreme Court temporarily paused the Trump administration’s planned deportations of Venezuelan migrants who are accused of being Tren de Aragua (TdA) gang members, under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act.
In a five-page dissent, Alito, along with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that the Supreme Court had “hastily and prematurely granted unprecedented emergency relief,” according to the New York Times. Alito explained that he “refused to join the Court’s order” because the Supreme Court “had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.”
The dissent of Alito comes after the Supreme Court directed the Trump administration “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States.”
“Shortly after midnight yesterday, the Court hastily and prematurely granted unprecedented emergency relief,” the justices wrote in their dissenting opinion. “Proceeding under the All Writs Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1651, the Court ordered ‘[t]he Government’ not to remove a ‘putative class of detainees’ until this Court issues a superseding order.”
Alito continued to note that the Supreme Court issued this decision, though it was “not clear that the Court had jurisdiction.”
“The All Writs Act does not provide an independent grant of jurisdiction,” Alito continued. “See 28 U.S.C. §1651(a) (permitting writs ‘necessary or appropriate in aid of’ a court’s jurisdiction); Clinton v. Goldsmith, 526 U.S. 529, 534-535 (1999) (‘the express terms’ of the All Writs Act ‘confine the power of [a court] to issuing process ‘in aid of’ its existing statutory jurisdiction; the Act does not enlarge that jurisdiction’ (quoting §1651(a)).”
Alito added that it was also “questionable whether the applicants complied with the general obligation to seek emergency injunctive relief in the District Court before asking for such relief from an appellate court.”
“When this Court rushed to enter its order, the Court of Appeals was considering the issue of emergency relief, and we were informed that a decision would be forthcoming,” Alito added. “This Court, however, refused to wait.”
Alito continued:
In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order.
The Supreme Court’s order came after American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorneys for Venezuelan migrants who have been accused of being TdA members, and who are being held in a Texas detention center, asked the Supreme Court to “preserve the status quo so that proposed class members” would not be sent to prison in El Salvador, without having due process.
Breitbart News previously reported that ACLU attorneys for the Venezuelan migrants requested that U.S. District Judge James Boasberg “issued a temporary restraining order” that would require their clients to receive 30 days’ notice prior to being deported.
ABC News reported that ACLU attorneys had submitted a document titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act,” which accused the Venezuelan migrants of being “a member of Tren de Aragua”:
In a court filing Friday, the attorneys submitted a document they say is the notice their clients received Friday from immigration officials.
The document, titled “Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act,” says, “You have been determined to be … a member of Tren de Aragua.”
“You have been determined to be an Alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States,” the notice says. “This is not a removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
Along with requesting that Boasberg issue a temporary restraining order, ACLU attorneys “mounted challenges in three different courts within five hours on Friday,” according to the New York Times:
The lawyers started with an emergency filing in Federal District Court in Abilene, Texas, in which they claimed that officers at the Bluebonnet Detention Center in Anson had started distributing notices to Venezuelan immigrants informing them that they could face deportation as soon as Friday night.
They asked Judge James Wesley Hendrix, who is overseeing the case, to issue an immediate order protecting all migrants in the Northern District of Texas who might face deportation under the Alien Enemies Act. When Judge Hendrix did not grant their request quickly — and later rejected it entirely — the lawyers filed a similar request to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans.
The Supreme Court’s order comes after the court, in a 5-4 decision, lifted a block from Boasberg that had prevented the Trump administration from deporting suspected illegal alien gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.
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