The Supreme Court issued an order on Saturday temporarily blocking the Trump administration from deporting 50 illegal immigrants from the violent Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang. Only justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented, with Alito writing a scathing, brilliant dissent that Thomas joined. Two lower courts had already refused to jump in and pause the deportations.
The order seemed strange, since earlier this month, SCOTUS ruled that Trump has authority under the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan gang members. But it left the door open for litigation by stating that gang members could appeal their deportations on a case by case basis.
The Alien Enemies Act gives the President unilateral authority to deport noncitizens who are subjects of foreign enemies, although the MSM has been spinning its description to pretend that it can only be invoked during war, since one of the triggers for deportations CAN be wartime. But the statute doesn’t state that it’s required. It clearly gives the President the power to deport dangerous violent individuals sent by a rogue nation. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was deliberately releasing violent criminals from prisons in order to let them flee to the U.S., according to letters sent to DHS by several members of Congress.
The relevant part of the law provides, “Whenever … any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.”
Note that the MSM articles on this topic never include this language from the statute because it is so crystal clear that the President has the authority. In fact, the MSM deliberately doesn’t even link to the law in their articles — even though almost all news is online now so there’s no reason not to. This has become a troubling pattern in MSM articles, deliberately avoiding linking to the law in order to make it more difficult for people to discover the truth.
Alito summarized, “[L]iterally 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, and without providing any explanation for its order.”
First of all, Alito said it wasn’t even clear that the court had the jurisdiction to stop Trump. Since the district court judge failed to rule on the ACLU’s request for a temporary restraining order by the deadline, it was likely premature for the plaintiffs to appeal, he said. The Fifth Circuit denied jurisdiction for the appeal due to that.
The ACLU demanded a ruling within 45 minutes on Good Friday from the district court judge, Alito said, and when the judge didn’t jump immediately, they went to the appeals court prematurely. U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix, a Trump appointee, said he declined to issue a rushed restraining order since ICE filed sworn declarations stating that the gang members would not be immediately deported.
The ACLU attempted to go around Hendrix by asking radical leftist U.S. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg to issue a restraining order instead, but Boasberg could not since he had no jurisdiction due to a lack of gang members in his D.C. jurisdiction. Boasberg is the judge who ruled that Trump committed criminal contempt by refusing his order to turn a plane around that was headed to El Salvador, in order to return MS-13 gang member Abrego Garcia back to the U.S. El Salvador President Nayib Bukele said he will not return the gang member, stating that it was “preposterous” to “smuggle a terrorist into the United States.”
The Supreme Court accepted jurisdiction before the appeals court had even made its determination that it had no jurisdiction, not bothering to wait for the lower court. The Supreme Court likely violated its own rule, Alito said. Supreme Court Rule 23.3 states that “[e]xcept in the most extraordinary circumstances, an application for a stay will not be entertained unless the relief requested was first sought in the appropriate court or courts below or from a judge or judges thereof.” Nor did the Supreme Court wait to hear the Trump administration’s response to the appeal.
Alito expressed skepticism as to the validity of the request for the emergency appeal. “The papers before us, while alleging that the applicants were in imminent danger of removal, provided little concrete support for that allegation.” He pointed out that one of Trump’s attorneys had revealed that no deportations were to occur on April 18 or 19, so there was no urgency.
Additionally, he said class relief was inappropriate since the district court never certified a class action, “and this Court has never held that class relief may be sought in a habeas proceeding.”
He concluded, “I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.” He accused his fellow justices of not following the law.
Unfortunately, this has become a pattern from the three judges Trump appointed to the court, siding with the leftist justices — leaving Alito and Thomas as the only reliable conservatives. Along with rogue judges in the lower courts, the seven justices are destroying the rule of law and overstepping their authority by trampling on the powers delegated by the Constitution to the executive branch. Fortunately, there are some solutions on the way, especially in regards to district court judges issuing nationwide injunctions.
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