Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued a stinging dissent to the high court’s decision over the weekend to block, at least temporarily, the deportation of alleged Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.
In an unsigned order issued shortly before 1 a.m. Saturday morning, SCOTUS directed the Trump administration “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”
The justices noted that the case is currently pending before the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.
“Upon action by the Fifth Circuit, the Solicitor General is invited to file a response to the application before this Court as soon as possible,” they added.
Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented from Saturday’s Supreme Court ruling.
“When this Court rushed to enter its order, the Court of Appeals was considering the issue of emergency relief, and we were informed that a decision would be forthcoming. This Court, however, refused to wait,” Alito wrote in his 5-page dissent.
He pointed out that under the SCOTUS’s rules, the justices are not to consider an emergency stay until the lower court has decided on the matter “except in the most extraordinary circumstances.”
Alito recounted that the Supreme Court issued its order based on the claims of the Venezuelans’ attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union alone that their clients were “in imminent danger of removal,” but “provided little concrete support for that allegation.”
Alito also highlighted that SCOTUS granted a class-wide relief, despite the district court not certifying the plaintiffs represent an entire class of people, nor that those seeking habeas relief (i.e., an opportunity to challenge their custody in court) can even do so as a class.
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“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order,” Alito wrote.
“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate,” he added.
Justice Alito’s dissent is 🔥 pic.twitter.com/1MqHYhPea9
— Mike Lee (@BasedMikeLee) April 20, 2025
“Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law. The Executive must proceed under the terms of our order in Trump v. J. G. G., 604 U. S. ___ (2025) (per curiam), and this Court should follow established procedures,” Alito concluded.
Earlier this month, in a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court held that the Trump administration had the authority to deport detainees under the Alien Enemies Act.
But the court said “that the detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal. The only question is which court will resolve that challenge.”
Conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett sided with the liberal wing of the court, opposing the ruling.
In Saturday’s order, Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, along with Barrett and the liberal justices, all supported blocking the deportations, at least temporarily.
SCOTUS Blog reported that Trump Solicitor D. John Sauer filed a 15-page brief Saturday afternoon, raising some of the same issues that Alito did in his dissent to the ruling.
“Those aliens are Venezuelan nationals who are unlawfully present in the United States and subject to removal under other authorities, but who the government has determined are members of the foreign terrorist organization Tren de Aragua and thus subject to removal pursuant to the AEA,” he wrote.
Sauer pointed out that “the government has provided advance notice to AEA detainees (including the named petitioners) prior to commencing AEA removals,” and they had time to file habeas claims as the Court’s previous ruling had required.
The Solicitor General contended that the Supreme Court should remove its stay “and allow the lower courts to address the relevant legal and factual questions in the first instance — including the development of a proper factual record.”
Sauer added, at a minimum, the Court should limit its stay to removals under the AEA and leave undisturbed the administration’s ability to remove the Venezuelans based on other immigration law.
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