The United States Supreme Court allows President Donald Trump to continue using a law rarely invoked in wartime to carry out rapid mass deportations of alleged gang members – for the moment.
A lower court had temporarily blocked the expulsion of alleged members of Venezuelan gangs in Salvador on March 15, judging that the actions under the law on extraterrestrial enemies of 1798 had to be examined.
Trump allegedly alleged that migrants were members of the Aragua gang Tren “leading an irregular war against the United States and could therefore be withdrawn under the law.
While the administration claims the decision as a victory, the judges forced the deportees to have the opportunity to challenge their withdrawal.
“The opinion must be granted within a reasonable time and so as to allow them to really ask habeas in the appropriate place before such a referral occurs,” the judges wrote in the decision not signed on Monday.
“The only question is what court will resolve this challenge,” they wrote.
The decision on Monday said that the challenge – put by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) on behalf of five migrants – was inappropriate in a Washington DC court and not in Texas, where migrants are confined.
Conservative judge Amy Creey Barrett joined the three liberal judges of the court dissident with the majority decision.
In dissent, they wrote that the “conduct of the administration in this dispute constitutes an extraordinary threat to the rule of law”.
Trump described the “big day for justice in America” decision.
“The Supreme Court has confirmed the rule of law of our nation by allowing a president, who may be, to be able to secure our borders and to protect our families and our country,” he wrote on Truth Social.
ACLU also claimed the decision Like “a huge victory”.
“We are disappointed that we had to start the legal process in a different place, but the critical point is that the Supreme Court said that individuals had to receive regular procedure to challenge their dismissal under the Aclu’s main law on extraterrestrial enemies,” Aclu, Lee Genernt, said in a statement to American media.
At least 137 people were expelled by the Trump administration under the Act respecting extraterrestrial enemies, a decision largely condemned by the rights defense groups.
The law, used for the last time in the Second World War, grants the President of the Balayage powers to order the detention and the expulsion of the natives or the citizens of an “enemy” nation without following the usual processes.
It was adopted as part of a series of laws in 1798 when the United States thought it would enter a war with France.
The Trump administration says that all deportees are members of the Aragua gang Tren. The powerful group of multinational crimes, which Trump recently declared a foreign terrorist organization, was accused of sex trafficking, smuggling drugs and murders at home and in major American cities.
US immigration officials said prisoners had been “carefully checked” and verified as gang members before being transported by plane for El Salvador, under an agreement with this country.
But many of the deportees do not have an American criminal record, an official of the application of the United States and the application of customs (ICE) recognized in legal documents.
Some parents of The expelled migrants said to the BBC The men were wrongly swept away in the repression of immigration and that they are innocent.
Several other families said they thought that the deportees were wrongly identified as gang members because of their tattoos.
Monday’s decision left a previous decision by federal judge James Boasberg, later confirmed by a federal court of appeal, which had temporarily blocked the use of the law to make the deportations.
Boasberg had rejected the government’s response to its order as “terribly insufficient”. The White House said that the judge’s ordinance itself was not legal and had been issued after two flights carrying the men had already left the United States.
The rights defense groups and certain legal experts called on the invocation of the unprecedented law, arguing that it was only used before after the United States officially declared a war, which, under the American Constitution, only the congress can do.
