WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday barred the Trump administration from quickly resuming deportations of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law enacted when the nation was just a few years old.
Over two dissenting votes, the justices acted on an emergency appeal from lawyers for Venezuelan men who have been accused of being gang members, a designation that the administration says makes them eligible for rapid removal from the United States under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The court indefinitely extended the prohibition on deportations from a north Texas detention facility under the alien enemies law. The case will now go back to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which declined to intervene in April.
The high court action is the latest in a string of judicial setbacks for the Trump administration’s effort to speed deportations of people in the country illegally. The president and his supporters have complained about having to provide due process for people they contend didn’t follow U.S. immigration laws.
The court had already called a temporary halt to the deportations, in a middle-of-the-night order issued last month. Officials seemed “poised to carry out removals imminently,” the court noted Friday.
