Supreme Court blocks deportation of Venezuelans held in Texas

(Bloomberg / Greg Stohr and David Voreacos) — The Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelans detained in Texas, granting them a reprieve from being imminently sent to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

The detainees had filed urgent requests to the high court, a federal appeals court and two trial courts to block their deportation.

“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,” according to the court order. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented, it said.

The flurry of activity in the case included an emergency hearing Friday evening before US District Judge James Boasberg in Washington, where a Justice Department lawyer said no deportation flights are planned for that night or Saturday.

Lawyers for the men filed their requests less than two weeks after the Supreme Court let President Donald Trump resume trying to deport alleged Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But the high court ruled they must get “reasonable time” to challenge their deportation in a federal court in the district where they’re being held.

Boasberg said that because the men are detained in Texas, he doesn’t have authority to rule on the dispute.

“At this point, I just don’t think I have the power to do anything about it,” Boasberg told lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union representing the men.

The allegations raise fresh questions about the administration’s compliance with the high court’s order. The Supreme Court request went to Alito, who is assigned to handle emergency matters from Texas. Alito, one of the court’s most conservative justices, could have either acted on his own or referred the matter to the full, nine-member court.

With Boasberg saying he’s unable to act, the case had hinged on an order by the high court, or decisions on similar emergency requests filed with a New Orleans-based federal appeals court and a federal district judge in the Northern District of Texas, where many of the men were recently transferred.

Without judicial intervention, potentially hundreds of people “may be removed to a possible life sentence in El Salvador with no real opportunity to contest their designation or removal,” lawyers for the men said in their Supreme Court request.

The group had been told they will be deported as soon as Friday afternoon and had already been loaded onto buses, according to a court filing.

Boasberg halted the hearing for 30 minutes so Justice Department lawyer Drew Ensign could gather more information about possible flight plans. When he returned, Ensign said he had spoken with officials at the Department of Homeland Security. They said that while there were no plans to remove people Saturday, they “reserve the right to remove people,” Ensign said.

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said: “That doesn’t give us confidence there won’t be planes.”

The detainees allegedly had been given an English-only notice that didn’t explain how they could contest their deportation or how much time they had to do so.

“The notice the government is providing does not remotely comply with the Supreme Court’s order,” lawyers for the men said in their Supreme Court filing.

Boasberg on March 15 unsuccessfully ordered the government to turn around planes that were carrying people to the Salvadoran prison without first getting judicial review of their cases.

At the hearing, Ensign said that Washington was not the appropriate place to file so-called habeas corpus petitions to contest the deportations. Boasberg ultimately agreed, saying they should raise it in the Northern District of Texas or with the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Gelernt said many of the men were moved to the Northern District of Texas after a judge in the Southern District of Texas issued a temporary order barring their deportations. Ensign said they had been moved there from all over the US. Gelernt said lawyers for the men would file petitions in all 94 judicial districts in the US.

Asked earlier Friday about whether he had authorized the operation, Trump said “I don’t know about the group you’re talking about, but if they’re bad people, I would certainly authorize it, yeah.”

Separately, a federal appeals court in Washington on Friday temporarily blocked Boasberg from starting criminal contempt proceedings stemming from the March 15 events.

The administrative stay gives the appeals court more time to consider how it will handle Boasberg’s conclusion that government officials showed “willful disregard” toward his order. The three-judge panel laid out a briefing schedule that concludes next Friday.

The Supreme Court case is A.A.R.P. v. Trump, 24A1007.

–With assistance from Hadriana Lowenkron.

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