Washington, DC (CNN) — The Supreme Court early Saturday morning paused the deportation of immigrants potentially subject to the Alien Enemies Act, freezing action in a fast-developing case involving a group of immigrants in Texas who say the Trump administration was working to remove them.
The court’s brief order drew dissents from conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas.
Attorneys for the Venezuelans at issue in the case filed an emergency appeal at the high court on Friday, claiming they were at immediate risk of being removed from the country and had not been provided sufficient notice to challenge their deportation.
The court’s brief order on Saturday did not explain the court’s reasoning. The court ordered the Trump administration to respond to the emergency appeal once a federal appeals court in Louisiana takes action in the case.
In the meantime, the court said, “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 White House said in a statement Saturday morning that “President Trump promised the American people to use all lawful measures to remove the threat of terrorist illegal aliens, like members of (Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua), from the United States.”
“We are confident in the lawfulness of the Administration’s actions and in ultimately prevailing against an onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of terrorist aliens than those of the American people,” said press secretary Karoline Leavitt.
Previously, a federal judge in Washington, DC, told lawyers for the migrants in Texas who believed the Trump administration is about to swiftly deport them under the Alien Enemies Act that he did not have the power to pause the deportations, even though he was concerned about the administration’s actions.
“I am sympathetic to everything you’re saying, I just don’t I think I have the power to do anything,” US District Judge James Boasberg told a lawyer for the migrants at an emergency hearing Friday night.
Before announcing his decision not to get involved, Boasberg pressed an attorney for the administration on whether it will move forward with the deportations Friday night or Saturday.
Justice Department attorney Drew Ensign told Boasberg that while no flights are planned, the Department of Homeland Security said it reserves the right to remove the migrants on Saturday.
The migrants’ lawyers also requested intervention by the 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees appeals coming out of Texas.
“It’s hard for me to say I should inject myself into this controversy given where the issue stands in the 5th Circuit and the Supreme Court,” Boasberg said Friday.
The migrants’ lawyers – counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward – turned to Boasberg for emergency relief in the initial case they brought in his court challenging President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, a sweeping 18th century wartime authority.
Saturday’s decision marks the second time Trump’s use of the authority has landed at the Supreme Court.
Last week, the court permitted Trump to use the authority, but said migrants being removed under it needed to receive notice that they are subject to the act and have an opportunity to have their removal reviewed by the federal court where they are being detained. The justices also ruled that migrants could only challenge their deportations in court districts containing the facilities where they’re being detained.
The current dispute reflects how aggressively the administration is willing to act to continue deportations under the Aliens Enemies Act, which allows the government to bypass some of the protocols in the immigration statutes that typically guide the process for removing migrants in the US illegally.
“We hear men are being requested to change clothes,” the migrants’ attorney said Friday, as he unsuccessfully pleaded with Boasberg to issue even a very brief pause in the administration’s plans.
Contempt proceedings
Boasberg has ordered contempt proceedings against the administration for allegedly defying an earlier order he issued in the case – later wiped away by the Supreme Court – that sought to halt the first round of deportation flights under the president’s mid-March invocation of the law.
However, on Friday night, an appeals court issued an administrative pause on Boasberg’s plans so that it could review whether such proceedings should go forward.
The unsigned order the Supreme Court issued the first time the issue reached its doorstep said that the administration must provide adequate notice to migrants so they can challenge their removals under the 18th century law. At Friday’s hearing, ACLU attorney Lee Gelernt provided new evidence about the notice the migrants are receiving from the administration that they’ve been designated for deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
Gelernt said detainees received notice of their removal less than 24 hours ago, with no clear option to challenge them, and a photo of one such notice was submitted to the court.
Ensign, the DOJ attorney, insisted that while the Supreme Court’s order said that the government must give notice, it did not say that government needed to offer a space to challenge the deportations. He told the court that anyone who says they want to challenge their removal is given a process to do so.
“I certainly think the notice is very troubling,” Boasberg said, expressing doubt that it complied with the Supreme Court’s ruling.
“But I don’t think I have the ability to grant relief,” he said
CNN’s Jessie Yeung and Samantha Waldenberg contributed to this report.