Supreme Court allows Trump administration to use wartime law for deportations

The Supreme Court on Monday allowed the Trump administration to use an 18th-century wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants. The approval to enforce the Alien Enemies Act, hands the White House a significant victory that will give sweeping authority to immigration officials to expedite the deportation of alleged gang members.

The Supreme Court stressed that these detainees must get a court hearing before they are taken from the United States. In a bitterly divided ruling, the court said that in the future, people who are deported should receive notice they are subject to the act and an opportunity to have their removal reviewed by the federal court where they are being detained. The court’s three liberal justices dissented from the decision, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a member of the court’s conservative wing, partially dissented.

Trump took to Truth Social to praise the decision in a post saying, “The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself”.

Attorney General Pam Bondi also celebrated the decision on social media. An activist judge in Washington DC, does not have the jurisdiction to seize control of President Trump’s authority to conduct foreign policy and keep the American people safe,” she said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s most senior liberal, argued the Trump administration’s conduct in the case “poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.”

“That a majority of this court now rewards the government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible,” she wrote. “We, as a nation and a court of law, should be better than this.”