The Supreme Court holds that the Trump administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelan migrants last month in its rushed effort to expel them to El Salvador in the middle of the night (which SCOTUS blocked). Alito and Thomas dissent.
SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
No. 24A1007
A. A. R. P., ET AL. v. DONALD J. TRUMP, PRESIDENT
OF THE UNITED STATES, ET AL.
ON APPLICATION FOR INJUNCTION
[May 16, 2025]
PER CURIAM .
The President has invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA),
Rev. Stat. §4067, 50 U. S. C. §21, to remove Venezuelan na-
tionals who are members of Tren de Aragua (TdA), a desig-
nated foreign terrorist organization. See Presidential Proc-
lamation No. 10903, 90 Fed. Reg. 13033 (2025). Applicants
are two detainees identified as members of TdA and a pu-
tative class of similarly situated detainees in the Northern
District of Texas. All of the alleged TdA members in the
putative class are currently being held in U. S. detention
facilities. In the application before the Court, the detainees
seek injunctive relief against summary removal under the
AEA.
I
On April 17, 2025, the District Court denied the detain-
ees’ motion for a temporary restraining order (TRO) against
summary removal under the AEA. No. 25−cv−59, ECF Doc.
27. The detainees allege that, hours later, putative class
members were served notices of AEA removal and told that
they would be removed “tonight or tomorrow.” ECF Doc.
30, p. 1. On April 18 at 12:34 a.m. central time, the detain-
ees moved for an emergency TRO. See ibid. At 12:48 p.m.,
the detainees moved for a ruling on that motion or a status
conference by 1:30 p.m. ECF Doc. 34. At 3:02 p.m., they
appealed “the constructive denia[l]” of the emergency TRO to the Fifth Circuit. ECF Doc. 36, p. 1.
The detainees also applied to this Court for a temporary injunction.
We understood the Government to assert the right to re-
move the detainees as soon as midnight central time on
April 19. The Government addressed the detainees’ allega-
tions on April 18 only at an evening hearing before the Dis-
trict Court for the District of Columbia, where the detainees
had separately sought relief. The Government guaranteed
that no putative class members would be removed that day.
Tr. of Proceedings in J. G. G. v. Trump, No. 25−cv−766,
ECF Doc. 93, p. 9. But it further represented that, in its
view, removal of putative class members as soon as the next
day “would be consistent with” its due process obligations,
and it “reserve[d] the right” to take such action. Id., at 26;
see id., at 16 (explanation by the court that “tomorrow . . .
starts at 12:01 a.m.”). Evidence now in the record (although
not all before us on April 18) suggests that the Government
had in fact taken steps on the afternoon of April 18 toward
removing detainees under the AEA—including transport-
ing them from their detention facility to an airport and later
returning them to the facility. See Supp. App. to Reply
1a−5a. Had the detainees been removed from the United
States to the custody of a foreign sovereign on April 19, the
Government may have argued, as it has previously argued,
that no U. S. court had jurisdiction to order relief. See Ap-
plication To Vacate Injunction in Noem v. Abrego Garcia,
No. 24A949 (Apr. 7, 2025), pp. 11−20.
At 12:52 a.m. eastern time (11:52 p.m. central time), we
ordered the Government—in light of all these circum-
stances—“not to remove any member of the putative class
of detainees” in order to preserve our jurisdiction to con-
sider the application. 604 U. S. ___ (2025). We invited the
Government to respond to that application after the Fifth
Circuit ruled. The Fifth Circuit dismissed the detainees’
appeal for lack of jurisdiction and denied their motion for
injunction pending appeal as premature, on the ground that the detainees “gave the [district] court only 42 minutes to
act.” No. 25−10534, ECF Doc. 14, p. 2. We now construe
the application as a petition for writ of certiorari from the
decision of the Fifth Circuit. See Reply 15. We grant the
petition as well as the application for injunction pending
further proceedings, vacate the judgment of the Fifth Cir-
cuit, and remand for further proceedings.
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