The Trump administration on Friday asked the Supreme Court to continue deporting Venezuelans in a process that is rarely called out, using wartime laws.
The emergency application arrived at the court after the federal court of appeals maintained a temporary bloc of deportation. In his application to the Supreme Court, the administration's lawyers argued that the matter was too urgent and too urgent to wait for the case to pass through the lower court.
In his government application, Deputy General Sarah M. Harris said the incident presented “basic questions about who will decide how to carry out sensitive national security-related businesses in this country.”
“The Constitution provides a clear answer: President,” writes Harris. “The Republic cannot afford to make another choice.”
The judge asked immigration lawyers to submit responses to government applications by 10am on April 1st, setting a prompt briefing schedule of the case.
The lawsuit provides a major early test of how the country's finest courts will stand up to President Trump's aggressive efforts to deport his hostile stances towards millions of immigrants and courts. Trump called for low court judges to be fired each, who suspended deportation.
The incident depends on the legality of an executive order signed by Trump, which evoked the Alien Enemy Act of 1798. The order uses the law to target people who are believed to be gang members of Venezuela in the United States.
Alien Enemy Law allows for the summaries of people coming from the United States and the nation at war. The law, best known for being used to detain Japanese-Americans during World War II, allows the exclusion of the subject of “hostile countries” over the age of 14 as “enemies of the alien” in wide latitudes of government during periods of declared war or invasion.
The conflict began in early February when Secretary of State Marco Rubio designated violent Venezuela Street gangster Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization.
On March 14, Trump signed an executive order calling for acts to quickly arrest and deport those identified as gang members by the administration.
In his government application, Harris wrote that the president determined that thousands of members of the designated foreign terrorist organizations were illegally “infiltrating the country” as part of the Venezuelan government's plan to destabilize democracy.
Judge James E. Boasberg, a U.S. District Court in Washington, has issued a temporary restraining order blocking the government from deporting Venezuelan immigrants under the law. The judge ordered that the flight, which left the country with immigrants under the executive order, “But that has been achieved — whether or not the plane will turn around.”
However, dozens of people were placed on planes and sent to prisons in El Salvador without many legal protections under federal immigration law.
The Trump administration has made little clear about how it decided who belongs to the gang, and the government's application states that “the administration only stated gang members whose members were designated gangs “identified through a strict process.”
Executives have not given a clear timeline when flights landed in El Salvador, but White House officials say immigrants were “already excluded from US territory” at the time of the judge's order.
The emergency application did not add clarity to its timeline. The removal of immigration “marked the culmination of weeks of work by President Trump and his cabinet.”
“As with many sensitive diplomacy and national security projects, speed was essential,” read the government's brief explanation.
A 2-1 vote allowed a panel of federal judges at the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals to maintain that Judge Boasberg suspended his deportation in a decision issued on March 26th.
In that application, the Trump administration argued that the Court of Appeals' ruling “cries out this court's intervention,” and that the attorney for the detained immigrants “has brought the wrong claim to the wrong court.”
Government lawyers argued that under the enemy laws of foreigners, detention and removal is “are barely suitable for judicial review and therefore bound by critical national security judgments.” They also argued that immigrants need to pose their challenges in Texas, where they were previously detained.
The Trump administration argued that such a temporary court suspension on deportation would “reject the president's judgment on how to protect the country from foreign terrorist organizations, and risk the debilitating effects of sensitive foreign negotiations.”
The government argued that those involved in Tren de Aragua should be subject to deportation as an adversary, as they were in close sync with the leadership of the Venezuelan government and the country's president, Nicolas Maduro. The Trump administration also argued that their arrival in the US constituted an invasion under the law.
It remains unclear what evidence the government relied on to determine that those sent to El Salvador were members of the Venezuelan gang. So far, the administration has refused to provide names or details about what has been removed.
White House spokesman Caroline Leavitt told reporters that the Trump administration “will not disclose details of its operations regarding counterterrorism operations.” The administration's lawyers told federal judges they would not disclose any further information regarding their flight to Venezuela. Doing so would put state secrets at risk, lawyers said.
In the court application, the lawyer, whose at least five people flew to a prison in El Salvador, opposed the allegations tied to the gang. They criticized the government by relying at least in part on tattoos that federal agents believe to show gang bonds, and disputed that their clients were gang members.
The lawyer said one man got his tattoo because it resembles the logo of his favorite soccer team. Another got a tattoo honoring his grandmother. The third immigrant sister declared her oath that her brother's tattoo (a rose carrying a bill as petal) had no connection to the gang.
