The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt the deportation of a group of Venezuelans alleged to be gang members. The ruling follows a legal challenge by a civil liberties group, which argued that the men had been denied the opportunity to contest their cases in court.
The individuals are currently detained in north Texas under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law that allows the president to order the detention and deportation of citizens of “enemy” nations without standard legal processes.
The Trump administration had invoked this rarely used act, which had previously been employed only three times, all during wartime. Most notably, it was used during World War Two to detain and deport people of Japanese descent.
The administration accused members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua of “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” on US territory.
According to CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner, 137 out of 261 Venezuelans deported to El Salvador as of April 8th were removed under the Alien Enemies Act. A lower court had initially blocked these deportations on March 15th.
While the Supreme Court had previously ruled on April 8th that the act could be used to deport alleged gang members, it stipulated that deportees must be given a chance to challenge their removal.
The lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which led to Saturday’s order, argued that the Venezuelans detained in north Texas had been given deportation notices in English, despite one detainee speaking only Spanish. The ACLU also argued that the men had not been informed of their right to contest the decision in court.
“Without this Court’s intervention, dozens or hundreds of proposed class members may be removed to a possible life sentence in El Salvador with no real opportunity to contest their designation or removal,” the ACLU stated in its lawsuit.
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented from Saturday’s ruling.
President Trump, in his second inaugural address in January, had pledged to “eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil.”
The case has also drawn attention to the deportation of El Salvador national Kilmar Ábrego García, whom the government alleges is a member of the MS-13 gang, an accusation denied by his lawyer and family. Mr. Ábrego García has never been convicted of a crime. The Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the government should facilitate his return, but the Trump administration has stated he will “never” live in the US again.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, visited Mr. Ábrego García in El Salvador and reported that he had been moved from the Cecot (Terrorism Confinement Centre) mega-jail to a new prison.
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