The Supreme Court delivered two significant victories to President Trump’s immigration agenda Monday erasing blockades that had prevented him from carrying out some high-profile deportations and canceling a deadline for bringing back an already-deported gang suspect.
Both cases had quickly turned into major constitutional clashes between the lower courts and Mr. Trump, who said adversarial judges were meddling with his national security and foreign policy powers.
The bigger of the two rulings gave backing to Mr. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to speed deportations of people the government has deemed to be part of terrorist organizations — in this case, members of the MS-13 and Tren de Aragua gangs.
Mr. Trump carried out three flights on March 15 flexing the Alien Enemies Act, drawing the ire of a lower court judge who tried to ground the planes and, failing that, has said he is exploring whether to order the migrants brought back.
The justices, in a 5-4 ruling, undercut District Judge James Boasberg, saying he didn’t have jurisdiction to hear the case.
The majority said the migrants must challenge their deportations through what’s known as “habeas” cases. Those are powerful but narrow challenges to a person’s detention, which must be brought in the local federal court in which the plaintiff is detained.
Since the Venezuelans were being held in Texas before sent to El Salvador, that was where they needed to file their challenges, the high court majority said in an unsigned order.
The justices did slap some new limits on the Trump team, saying anyone about to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act must be given notice that the law is being used against them, and they must be given a “reasonable time” to file a habeas challenge.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor led the dissent, saying Mr. Trump is barreling through all the usual safeguards in a rush to deport people without having to answer to the courts.
“The government’s conduct in this litigation poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law,” she wrote in an opinion joined in full by the court’s other two Democratic appointees and in part by Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, who was part of the majority, filed his own opinion saying all sides agreed that the migrants deserved a day in court.
“The only question is where that judicial review should occur,” he wrote.
In the other case, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. erased a midnight Monday deadline a lower judge had set for the Trump administration to bring back a Salvadoran MS-13 suspect who was on the March 15 flights.
Kilmar Abrego-Garcia, who had been living in Maryland until he was arrested on March 12, denies being part of MS-13. His family sued to challenge his deportation.
U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis agreed with them and issued an order Friday demanding he be returned to the U.S. by the end of Monday.
Chief Justice Roberts ordered more briefings in the case and put the deadline on hold until a further move from the Supreme Court.
The Trump team cheered the move.
“We welcome this stay from the Supreme Court as we continue to fight this case and protect the executive branch from judicial overreach,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said.
The White House admits Mr. Abrego-Garcia was wrongly deported to El Salvador but says it has little authority to bring him back now, given that he’s a Salvadoran citizen in a Salvadoran prison.
Solicitor General John Sauer said that although the deportation was wrong, “that does not license district courts to seize control over foreign relations, treat the executive branch as a subordinate diplomat, and demand that the United States let a member of a foreign terrorist organization into America tonight.”
Lower-court judges, though, said the entire deportation was tainted by the government’s errors.
“There is no question that the government screwed up here,” said Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was part of a three-judge panel of the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals that upheld the Monday deadline hours before the Supreme Court put it on hold.
“The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process,” wrote Judge Stephanie Thacker, who called the arrest and deportation “unconscionable.”
Mr. Abrego-Garcia, a Salvadoran citizen, was in the country illegally and was ordered deported by an immigration judge in 2019. However, the judge also found that he would face persecution if sent back to El Salvador, so it granted him what is known as withholding of removal.
That meant he could be deported to another country but not El Salvador.
On March 15, despite that ruling, he was put on one of three planeloads of people the government said were members of MS-13 or Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang. The administration has declared both gangs to be terrorist organizations.
Mr. Abrego-Garcia has denied being a member of MS-13.
An immigration judge in 2019 found it likely he was a member, based on a Prince George’s County Police Department report from a confidential source that identified him by his gang rank and gang nickname. He was also arrested by deportation authorities in 2019 in the company of known MS-13 figures, the immigration judge said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt has hinted at other offenses, though she provided no details.
Speaking to reporters last week, she ruled out returning Mr. Abrego-Garcia.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.