United States Supreme Court judge Samuel Alito, who was on the nine-judge bench which temporarily blocked US President Donald Trump’s administration from deporting a group of Venezuelans detained in Texas, mentioned in his sharply-worded dissent note that the court acted “literally in the middle of the night” and “without sufficient explanation.”
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Justice Alito, one of the two judges who dissented, the other being Justice Clarence Thomas, said there was “dubious factual support” for granting the request in an emergency appeal from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). The group had contended immigration authorities appeared to be moving to restart such removals under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
In the dissent note, released hours after the court’s intervention against the Trump administration, Alito wrote, “It is not clear whether the Supreme Court had jurisdiction at this stage of the case, as not all legal avenues have been played out in lower courts and the justices had not had the chance to hear the government’s side.”
He added, “The only papers before this court were those submitted by the applicants. The court had not ordered or received a response by the government regarding either the applicants’ factual allegations or any of the legal issues presented by the application. And the court did not have the benefit of a government response filed in any of the lower courts either.”
The conservative judge was also of the opinion that while the applicants claimed to be in “imminent danger” of removal, they provided “little concrete support” to support their allegation. He also noted that while the Supreme Court did not hear directly from the federal government regarding any planned deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in this case, a government lawyer in a different matter had told a US district court in a hearing on Friday no such deportations were then planned for either Friday or Saturday.
Alito’s note read, “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. I refuse to join the order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate. Both the Executive and the judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.”
In their Saturday order, the seven judges who blocked deportations, did not provide a detailed explanation. However, the court had previously said the exercise could proceed only after those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given “a reasonable time” to contest their pending removals.
Their brief order directed the Trump administration not to remove the Venezuelans held in north Texas’ Bluebonnet Detention Center “until further order of this court.”
The ACLU had already sued to block deportations of two Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet facility and sought an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the Alien Enemies Act, which has only been invoked three previous times in US history, most recently during World War II .
In the emergency filing, the ACLU warned immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan men held at the facility of being members of the “Tren de Aragua” gang, which would make them subject to Trump’s use of the 18th century law.
