Early Friday evening, the Supreme Court issued a pointed decision in the case of a group of Venezuelan detainees who previously faced the imminent risk of being sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador by the Trump administration. In addition to rejecting the administration’s choice to give these detainees only 24 hours notice of their removal, the decision answered a question indirectly posed in the case. Is the highest court in the nation sick of the Trump administration’s bullshit?
The answer, the decision states rather definitively, is yes — at least in immigration cases involving removals under the Alien Enemies Act.
In an eight-page unsigned decision, with only Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting, the court firmly rejected how the administration has been using the Alien Enemies Act to quickly remove Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants with little to no due process while also effectively calling the administration liars, in so many words.
The decision comes in the case of A.A.R.P. v. Trump (the plaintiff is a Venezuelan man, not the senior citizen interest group) where a group of Venezuelan immigrants detained at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, filed an emergency application to the Supreme Court to block their imminent removal after lower courts refused them April 18. The court responded with an extraordinarily rare late-night decision halting their removal at 12:52 a.m. April 19 and took up the case for further review.
