Supreme Court rebukes Texas judges, backs hearing before deportation for detained Venezuelans
Supreme Court faults Texas judges and Trump lawyers for seeking deportation before detained men could be heard.
WASHINGTON â The Supreme Court on Friday told conservative judges in Texas they must offer a hearing to detained Venezuelans whom the Trump administration wants to send to a prison in El Salvador.
The justices, over two dissents, rebuked Texas judges and Trumpâs lawyers for moving quickly and secretly on a weekend in mid-April to put these men on planes.
That led to a post-midnight order from the high court that told the administration it may ânot remove any member of the putative class of detainees.â The administration had argued it had the authority to deport the men as âalien enemiesâ under a wartime law adopted in 1798.
On Friday, the court issued an unusual eight-page order to explain their earlier decision. In doing so, the justices faulted a federal judge in Lubbock, Texas, and the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals for taking no action to protect the due process rights of the detained men.
The ruling noted that the government âmay remove the named plaintiffs or putative class members under other lawful authorities.â
The order carries a clear message that the justices are troubled by the Trump administrationâs pressure to fast-track deportations and by the unwillingness of some judges to protect the rights to due process of law.
After the ruling was issued, Trump wrote on Truth Social Friday: âTHE SUPREME COURT WONâT ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY.â He added in a second post: âThis decision will let more CRIMINALS pour into our Country, doing great harm to our cherished American public.â
Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLUâs Immigrantsâ Rights Project and lead counsel, said in a statement: âThe courtâs decision to stay removals is a powerful rebuke to the governmentâs attempt to hurry people away to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador. The use of a wartime authority during peacetime, without even affording due process, raises issues of profound importance.â
On a Saturday in mid-March, Trumpâs immigration officials sent three planeloads of detainees from Texas to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador before a federal judge in Washington could intervene. The prisoners included Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man who had an immigration order that was supposed to protect him from being sent back to his native El Salvador.
Afterward, Trump officials said the detained men, including Abrego Garcia, could not be returned to this country. They did so even though the Supreme Court had said they had a duty to âfacilitateâ Abrego Garciaâs return.
The same scenario was nearly repeated in mid-April, but from a different prison in Texas.
ACLU lawyers rushed to file an emergency appeal with U.S. District Judge James Hendrix. They said some of the detained men were on buses headed for the airport. They argued they deserved a hearing because many of them said they were not members of a crime gang.
The judge denied the appeals for all but two of the detained men.
The 5th Circuit Court upheld the judgeâs lack of action and blamed the detainees, saying they gave the judge âonly 42 minutes to act.â
The Supreme Court disagreed with both on Friday and overturned a decision of the 5th Circuit.
âA district courtâs inaction in the face of extreme urgency and a high risk of âserious, perhaps irreparableâ consequencesâ left the detained men with no options, the court said. âHere, the district courtâs inaction â not for 42 minutes but for 14 hours and 28 minutes â had the practical effect of refusing an injunction to detainees facing an imminent threat of severe, irreparable harm,â the justices wrote.
âThe 5th Amendment entitles aliens to due process of law in the context of removal proceedings. Procedural due process rules are meant to protectâ against âthe mistaken or unjustified deprivation of life, liberty, or property,â the majority said. âWe have long held that no person shall be removed from the United States without opportunity, at some time, to be heard.â
Justices Samuel A. Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented last month, and they did the same on Friday.
Times staff writer Andrea Castillo, in Washington, contributed to this report.