Inside the urgent fight over the Trump administration’s new deportation effort
- The San Juan Daily Star
- 16 hours ago
- 5 min read
By Hamed Aleaziz, Alan Feuer and Annie Correal
On Thursday evening, lawyers helping Venezuelan immigrants most at risk of being removed under an 18th-century wartime powers act received an ominous alert: U.S. immigration officials were handing out notices at a detention facility in Texas, informing migrants that they were considered enemies under the law and would be removed from the country.
“I am a law enforcement officer authorized to apprehend, restrain and remove alien enemies,” read the notice, a copy of which was filed in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Accordingly, under the Alien Enemies Act, you have been determined to be an alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States.”
The notice said the migrant could make a phone call but did not specify to whom. The single-page notice also did not mention any way to appeal the order.
The Supreme Court ruled this month that migrants must receive advance notice that they are subject to removal under the rarely invoked wartime powers law — and that they must have an opportunity to challenge their removal in court.
News of the notices being handed out at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, warning of impending deportations prompted a flurry of legal actions by the ACLU on Friday in several courts. Early Saturday, the Supreme Court stepped in with unusual speed, ruling that no flights could depart.
“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the court said. It is unclear when the justices will make a ruling on whether deportation flights can continue.
The lack of clear information from the government about the latest deportation operation raised new questions about whether the Trump administration was trying to sidestep the Supreme Court’s previous decision, which called for any migrant removed under the wartime law to have a chance to challenge their removal.
The move comes a month after the Trump administration executed a similar operation and deported more than 200 migrants to a prison in El Salvador, claiming that many of them were “alien enemies” and members of a Venezuelan gang. A New York Times investigation found that very few of them had clear, documented links to the group.
Their removal kicked off an enormous legal fight in which a federal judge threatened a contempt investigation into whether the Trump administration had violated his order directing officials to stop the planes of Venezuelan migrants.
Lawyers for the migrants said the administration appeared to be mobilizing an effort to swiftly deport another group under the wartime powers act. In recent days, they said, migrants in detention centers across the country were moved to the facility in Anson — a region that is not currently subject to a court order barring the use of the law in deportations. Once there, the migrants began receiving notices of removal.
The Trump administration said the deportations were not only appropriate but essential to protecting the public.
“We are confident in the lawfulness of the administration’s actions and in ultimately prevailing against an onslaught of meritless litigation brought by radical activists who care more about the rights of terrorist aliens than those of the American people,” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said in a statement Saturday.
Later that day, the administration asked the Supreme Court to “dissolve” its temporary block on deporting the Venezuelans and to allow lower courts to weigh in on the matter before intervening further.
“We’ve already seen the administration try to exploit every iota of wiggle room that the Supreme Court’s April 7 ruling created,” said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at Georgetown University. “It’s hard to imagine it won’t try again with the ruling from overnight.”
Immigrant rights advocates said they had been forced to move quickly because the Trump administration had repeatedly shown it was not affording migrants due process.
“If the government believes that its peacetime use of this wartime law is lawful, and that it hasn’t mistakenly tagged anyone as a gang member, then it should be fine with a court reviewing its actions,” said Lee Gelernt, the lead ACLU lawyer arguing for the migrants in the case. “When the stakes are this high, the last thing our government — and our Justice Department in particular — should be doing is seeking to evade judicial review.”
The newest legal fight kicked off earlier in the week, when the ACLU learned some Venezuelans might be deported from the Bluebonnet facility.
The group, which has sought to halt deportations under the Alien Enemies Act in cases across the country, raced to file a lawsuit Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Abilene, Texas, on behalf of two Venezuelans at the detention center.
Lawyers for the Justice Department responded by telling Judge James Wesley Hendrix — “unequivocally,” he later wrote — that the administration had no plans to deport the men.
Hendrix declined to issue an order Thursday shielding them from being removed. He also said he was not yet prepared to grant the ACLU’s request to extend protections to all the other Venezuelan migrants being held in Anson.
That evening, the ACLU received multiple calls that the notices were being handed out to immigrants at the facility, where migrants had been sent from across the country in recent days, according to Gelernt.
By Friday, the pace of the legal fight picked up.
The ACLU filed a second emergency motion to Hendrix, saying the deportations were “imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow.”
The lawyers were so concerned time was running short that they took the extraordinary step of giving the judge a 1:30 p.m. deadline to respond. After that, they went over his head to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.
The 5th Circuit was not the only court they tried.
By Friday afternoon, the ACLU had also asked for help from the Supreme Court and from Judge James Boasberg in U.S. District Court in Washington, who had issued the first order pausing deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
Boasberg set an emergency hearing for 6:15 p.m., asking the lawyer representing the Justice Department, Drew C. Ensign, what the administration’s plans were for the Venezuelan migrants at Bluebonnet.
Ensign said there would be no flights Friday. Saturday, however, was another matter. That was cold comfort for Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer.
“That doesn’t give us much confidence that there won’t be planes,” he told the judge.
Gelernt expressed concern that if the Venezuelans at Bluebonnet were deported to El Salvador, there would be little recourse to get them back. He noted the administration’s refusal to seek the return of a Salvadoran immigrant, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported to the country last month.
Boasberg said he was troubled by the situation but there was little he could do, given that the Supreme Court had told him he could not issue orders from Washington affecting immigrants in Texas.
“I find it very concerning,” he told Gelernt. “But at this point, I just don’t think I have the ability to grant relief to the plaintiffs.”
Some six hours later, the Supreme Court justices stepped in and did so themselves.
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