The United States Supreme Court has slammed the brakes on President Donald Trump’s push to deport Venezuelan migrants using a law older than the telegraph. In a brief but forceful unsigned opinion issued Friday, the justices blocked the administration’s controversial invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act—a statute rooted in wartime fears, not peacetime politics.
This marks the second time Trump’s efforts to fast-track migrant expulsions have hit a legal wall at the nation’s highest court since his return to the Oval Office in January. The decision came after the American Civil Liberties Union sounded the alarm about imminent removals happening without due process—no hearings, no notice, just loaded buses and one-way flights.
The Court agreed that wasn’t going to fly.
“A day’s notice without meaningful information on how to challenge removal does not cut it,” the justices wrote, underscoring the constitutional necessity of basic fairness—even in immigration enforcement.
Trump, never one to sit quietly, fired off a furious missive on social media. “A bad and dangerous day for America!” he declared, warning that the ruling would encourage criminal migrants and burden taxpayers with drawn-out legal fights.
But the Court saw it differently. The ruling emphasized the “particularly weighty” interests of the detainees—especially in light of revelations that at least one individual had been wrongly deported to El Salvador and couldn’t be brought back.
Two justices dissented—Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Alito questioned whether the Supreme Court even had jurisdiction to act and suggested the justices were overreaching by pausing the deportations.
Still, the majority held firm, directing the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to hash out what minimum procedures the administration must follow to meet constitutional standards.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has continued to defend its actions by invoking the Alien Enemies Act—a law last significantly used during World War II, when Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants were interned and deported. Today, that same law is being wielded against Venezuelan migrants accused of ties to the gang Tren de Aragua, which the U.S. has labeled a terrorist group.
Lawyers for the migrants, however, insist many of the deportees were falsely accused and never given the chance to prove otherwise. Families say their relatives were scooped up with little explanation and sent to El Salvador, where they now languish in a heavily guarded anti-terror prison under a $6 million U.S.-funded agreement with President Nayib Bukele’s government.
Lee Gelernt of the ACLU called the ruling “a powerful rebuke,” denouncing the administration’s actions as an attempt to disappear people into a modern-day gulag without a trace of justice.
The Supreme Court has not ruled on whether Trump’s use of the 1798 law is ultimately legal. But for now, it has made one thing clear: due process cannot be shoved aside, even in the name of national security.
