Two federal judges granted nearly simultaneous orders Wednesday that temporarily blocked Alien Enemies Act deportations in parts of Texas and New York, rulings that come days after the Supreme Court weighed in on the Trump administration’s use of the law.
Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a Trump appointee, halted deportations in two counties in south Texas under the Alien Enemies Act until April 23 in response to a lawsuit brought Wednesday morning by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of three Venezuelans.
Moments earlier, Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a Clinton appointee, issued a similar verbal temporary order from New York in response to a lawsuit brought Tuesday by the ACLU on behalf of two Venezuelans. Hellerstein said he would provide a written order later Wednesday, but it was not immediately clear whether his order applied to Orange County, New York, or all of the Southern District of New York, according to Inner City Press.
The plaintiffs in the two cases comprise the five Venezuelans who brought the original Alien Enemies Act case in the District of Columbia. The Supreme Court issued an emergency ruling in that case Monday that did not weigh in on President Donald Trump’s use of the powerful wartime law but instead found that Washington was an inappropriate venue to examine cases that challenge it.
Justices on the high court said that any alleged Tren de Aragua gang members Trump wanted to deport under the Alien Enemies Act must be given a chance to protest their deportations in the court district in which they are detained.
The Trump administration initially planned to deport the five Venezuelans from Texas to a prison in El Salvador along with the more than 250 other alleged gang members it deported on March 15, but the ACLU’s original lawsuit led to Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocking the five migrants’ deportations.
WHAT TO EXPECT AFTER SUPREME COURT CLEARS WAY FOR ALIEN ENEMIES ACT DEPORTATIONS
The five plaintiffs were then split up, and three are now detained in the El Valle Detention Center in Texas while two are in the Orange County Correctional Facility in New York. The Supreme Court’s ruling meant the ACLU had to file habeas corpus petitions, which are lawsuits challenging a person’s confinement, in those two locations as the behemoth civil rights group continues its attempts to block Trump from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport them.
Legal experts have said new lawsuits such as these could be vehicles to bring unresolved legal questions about the Alien Enemies Act before the Supreme Court.
