(Daily Signal)—The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration early Saturday morning to pause the deportation of some Venezuelan illegal aliens until the court can rule further.
The Court did not grant or deny the use of the Alien Enemies Act to remove the illegal aliens, who the Trump administrations claims are Tren de Aragua gang members, but instead the justices simply hit pause on the matter.
“The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court,” the order states.
After designating Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, the White House announced in March that President Donald Trump would use the powers of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to remove members of the gang from America.
The illegal immigrants in question in the ongoing case are currently being held in Texas.
The Supreme Court order is in response to an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from the Court’s order.
Before the Supreme Court issued the order, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. told the lawyers representing the illegal aliens that he did not have the power to stop deportation flights.
“I am sympathetic to everything you’re saying, I just don’t I think I have the power to do anything,” Boasberg told the attorneys for the illegal aliens.
Boasberg did, last month, issued a temporary restraining order barring the U.S. from using the Alien Enemies Act to rapidly deport illegal aliens, but shortly thereafter the Supreme Court ruled that the Trump administration could resume deportations of Venezuelan criminal illegal aliens under the Alien Enemies Act.
The 5-4 decision from the justices was narrow and did not address the constitutionality of using the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua. Instead, the court said in its opinion that “judicial review” was requested in the wrong court. The attorneys for the illegal alien should have filed their lawsuit against the deportations in Texas, where the illegal aliens are being held, instead of filing in Washington, D.C., the court found.
Around the same time the Supreme Court issued its order Saturday morning pausing the use of the Alien Enemies act to deport illegal aliens, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals which oversees appeals cases coming out of Texas, refused to issue an order blocking the illegal aliens from being deported.
