The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday, May 16, 2025, that the Trump administration's attempt to deport a group of Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law "does not pass muster." (Photo by Jane Norman/States Newsroom)

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday kept in place a block on the Trump administration’s efforts to deport 176 Venezuelans in Northern Texas under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

A majority of the justices found that President Donald Trump’s administration violated the due process rights of Venezuelans when the administration tried to deport them from North Texas last month by invoking the 18th-century wartime law. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented.

“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” according to the decision.

The justices did not determine the legality of the Trump administration using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans 14 and older with suspected ties to the gang Tren de Aragua.

On his social media platform, Trump expressed his disapproval of the ruling.

“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” he wrote on Truth Social.

The justices found that the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals “erred in dismissing the detainees’ appeal for lack of jurisdiction,” and vacated that order, sending the case back.

The Trump administration on Monday asked the high court to remove the injunction, arguing that detaining suspected members of Tren de Aragua poses a threat to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff.

In a Wednesday response, the American Civil Liberties Union, which brought the suit, warned that if the Supreme Court lifts its injunction, “most of the putative class members will be removed with little chance to seek judicial review.”

In Friday’s order, the justices noted that because the Trump administration has used the Alien Enemies Act to send migrants to a notorious prison in El Salvador, careful due process is needed.

“The Government has represented elsewhere that it is unable to provide for the return of an individual deported in error to a prison in El Salvador…where it is alleged that detainees face indefinite detention,” according to the order, noting the wrongful deportation of Maryland man Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador.

“The detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty,” the court continued.

Other rulings

On April 18, the ACLU made an emergency application to the high court, asking to bar any removals under the Alien Enemies Act in the Northern District of Texas over concerns that the Trump administration was not following due process.

Several federal judges elsewhere have blocked the use of the wartime law in their districts that cover Colorado, Southern Texas and Southern New York.

A federal judge in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday was the first to uphold the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those accused must have at least three weeks to challenge their removal.

Protesters gather to support Judge Hannah Dugan. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)

Judge Hannah Dugan appeared at her arraignment Thursday in Milwaukee’s federal court and pleaded not guilty to charges that she helped a man elude federal agents in the Milwaukee County courthouse earlier this year. 

Dugan was arrested in April and was indicted Tuesday by a grand jury on two counts, concealing a person from arrest and obstruction of proceedings. The charges could carry penalties of six years of prison, years of supervision, and at least $350,000 in fines. 

Dugan appeared with three attorneys, and did not comment to reporters after the hearing was over. Attorneys mentioned in court that a small number of video excerpts have been shared with the defense, but discovery is still ongoing. 

Judge Lynn Adelman has been assigned to preside over Dugan’s jury trial, which was set to start on July 21, with a pretrial hearing July 9. Jury selection is expected to be lengthy and complicated. A motions hearing was set in Judge Nancy Joseph’s court on May 30.

Dugan is accused of escorting a man into a public hallway with access to elevators after federal agents arrived outside her courtroom, where the man, a Mexican immigrant, was having a routine hearing in a misdemeanor battery case.

The agents had an administrative warrant for his arrest, which was not signed by a judge and did not give agents the authority to enter the courtroom. While the agents waited in the hallway outside, Dugan directed the man and his attorney out a side door that exited into the same hallway. The agents saw him leave the room and one rode down the elevator with him before he was arrested later on the street. 

Outside the Milwaukee federal courthouse on Thursday, a crowd of about 200 people gathered, including elected officials, activists and local residents showed up early in the morning to support the circuit court judge. Speakers led chants through a microphone on the courthouse steps.

One person at the rally, Erik Fanning, said that the charges against Dugan feel “preposterous,” and argued that a judge would be knowledgeable about what the law would and would not allow her to do in courtroom situations. 

“As many people in this country have found out, the law can be manipulated in order to serve an interest that’s sometimes more powerful than the law, as we’re seeing right now in this country,” Fanning told Wisconsin Examiner. “And so that’s the fear here with me.”

After her arrest, Dugan was suspended by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and protests erupted in Milwaukee County calling for the charges against her to be dropped.

If the case against Dugan succeeds, “That’s a powerful statement,” Fanning said. “That’s a powerful move in this game that they’re playing with our justice system.”

Shortly after Dugan’s arrest, FBI Director Kash Patel posted on social media praising her detention, then deleted the post. 

For Fanning, Dugan’s arrest felt like a “made-for-TV” moment created by the Trump administration. More press attention on Dugan’s arrest and trial validates his own instincts that “this is a watershed moment,” he said.  

“The media should be interested, because it’s a frightening, very important moment,” Fanning said. “Remember who this administration’s leader is. It’s a TV guy. It’s a manipulating the press, and propaganda guy…So everything they do is a TV show.”

Prison officers stand guard at a cell block at maximum security penitentiary CECOT, or Center for the Compulsory Housing of Terrorism, on April 4, 2025, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador.. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to lift its own injunction placed last month in the Northern District of Texas to allow for the deportation of a group of Venezuelan nationals under an 18th-century wartime law.

In the Monday filing, the Trump administration stated that the 176 Venezuelans have alleged ties to the Tren de Aragua gang, and are therefore subject to removal under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that detaining suspected members of the Tren de Aragua gang poses a threat to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and staff.

She said that 23 migrants barricaded themselves in the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas. and “threatened to take hostages, and endangered officers.” Reuters sent a drone over the facility, and captured images of the detained men spelling out SOS with their bodies, over fears that they would be sent to El Salvador. 

The Trump administration has removed those subject to the Alien Enemies Act to a notorious mega-prison in El Salvador.

The administration request stems from an April 18 emergency application from the American Civil Liberties Union that asked the high court to bar any removals under the Alien Enemies Act in the Northern District of Texas over concerns that the Trump administration was not following due process.

The justices, in a 7-2 ruling, ordered that while the lower case is before the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, “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.”

Monday’s filing by Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that those Venezuelans subject to the proclamation must be deported because the migrants “have proven to be especially dangerous to maintain in prolonged detention.”

In a Wednesday response, the ACLU warned that if the Supreme Court lifts its injunction, “most of the putative class members will be removed with little chance to seek judicial review.”

“And under the government’s position, courts will lack authority to remedy unlawful removals to the CECOT Salvadoran prison, where individuals could be held incommunicado for the remainder of their lives,” according to the ACLU brief.

In a separate emergency filing that issued a nationwide injunction that barred the Trump administration from invoking the proclamation, the Supreme Court ruled that, for now, the Trump administration can continue to use the Alien Enemies Act.

But the justices unanimously ruled that those who are subject to the wartime law must be given proper due process as enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.

Several federal judges have blocked the use of the wartime law in their districts that cover Colorado, Northern and Southern Texas and Southern New York.

A federal judge in Western Pennsylvania Tuesday was the first to uphold the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, but said those accused must have at least three weeks to challenge their removal.

In court documents, the Trump administration has noted that adequate time for someone to challenge an Alien Enemies Act designation is roughly 12 hours. 

Minister of Justice and Public Security Héctor Villatoro,  right, accompanies Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, center during a tour of the CECOT prison on March 26, 2025 in Tecoluca, El Salvador.  (Photo by Alex Brandon-Pool/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — Two federal judges Tuesday blocked the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans, limiting the rulings to Colorado and a New York district.

U.S. District Judge for the Southern District of New York Alvin K. Hellerstein found that President Donald Trump’s invocation of the wartime law was likely not valid, because there is no “existence of a ‘war,’ ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion,’” as required by the Alien Enemies Act statute.

A similar order was made by U.S. District Judge for the District of Colorado Charlotte N. Sweeney, who noted the Trump administration likely exceeded the scope of the Alien Enemies Act in its use of it.

Hellerstein, who was appointed by former President Bill Clinton, also reiterated in his order that anyone in the United States – including those who are not citizens – is entitled to due process.

He noted that the Venezuelan nationals subject to the Alien Enemies Act were deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, CECOT, “​​with faint hope of process or return.”

“The sweep for removal is ongoing, extending to the litigants in this case and others, thwarted only by order of this and other federal courts,” Hellerstein wrote. “The destination, El Salvador, a country paid to take our aliens, is neither the country from which the aliens came, nor to which they wish to be removed. But they are taken there, and there to remain, indefinitely, in a notoriously evil jail, unable to communicate with counsel, family or friends.”

Two Venezuelan men who feared they would be subjected to the proclamation brought the suit in the Southern District of New York. It’s now a class to cover any Venezuelan potentially subject to the proclamation.

Sweeney, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden, also ordered the suit should cover a class of people.

The New York area in which Trump officials would be barred from using the wartime law includes New York City, the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx and Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan and Westchester counties. 

Multiple rulings against administration

This is the third preliminary injunction granted by federal judges against Trump’s use of the wartime law in a court’s district. The president invoked the Alien Enemies Act to subject for removal any Venezuelan national 14 and older with suspected ties to the Tren de Aragua gang.

Tuesday’s rulings are similar to another out of Texas, where Trump-appointed Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. struck down the Trump administration’s use of the wartime law to deport Venezuelan nationals in the Southern District of Texas.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which is at the forefront of challenges against the Trump administration’s use in March of the Alien Enemies Act, praised the preliminary injunction in New York.

“The court joined several others in correctly recognizing the president cannot simply declare that there’s been an invasion and then invoke a wartime authority during peacetime to send individuals to a Gulag-type prison in El Salvador without even giving them due process,” said Lee Gelernt, lead ACLU attorney on the case.

The ACLU has filed lawsuits against the use of the wartime law in federal courts in Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C.

Prisoners sit at the Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo, or CECOT, on April 4, 2025, in Tecoluca, San Vicente, El Salvador. The Trump administration deported 238 alleged members of Venezuelan criminal organizations to the prison. (Photo by Alex Peña/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — A federal judge Thursday struck down President Donald Trump’s use of a wartime law to deport Venezuelan nationals, but limited the scope to the Southern District of Texas.

Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., whom Trump appointed in 2017, wrote in a 36-page order that the administration’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act was unlawful, especially during a time when the U.S. is not at war.

“Allowing the President to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the (Alien Enemies Act), and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the Executive Branch’s authority under the (Alien Enemies Act), and would strip the courts of their traditional role of interpreting Congressional statutes to determine whether a government official has exceeded the statute’s scope,” he wrote.

“The law does not support such a position.”

Rodriguez Jr. rejected the Trump administration’s claim that the presence of members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua in the U.S. constituted an “invasion” under which the wartime law could be invoked.

Prior to Trump’s invocation of the act in March against Venezuelan nationals 14 and older suspected of gang ties, the only times the U.S. had used the Alien Enemies Act were during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

Scope limited but significant

Thursday’s ruling only applies in the Southern District of Texas, but could impact several cases before federal judges across the country challenging the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which has been at the forefront of the cases regarding the law, also has lawsuits pending in federal courts in Colorado, Georgia, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, Texas and Washington, D.C.

Though the ruling is limited geographically, it applies to an important district for the issue. The original flights carrying men deported under Trump’s use of the law departed from Harlingen, Texas, within the judicial district. The government is also detaining more potential deportees in the district.

The U.S. Supreme Court lifted a lower court’s order that barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport any Venezuelan nationals — but the justices said unanimously that the Venezuelans must be afforded due process.

In April, Rodriguez Jr. temporarily halted the use of the Alien Enemies Act over concerns that anyone who is erroneously deported under the wartime law potentially cannot be returned to the United States. He cited the high-profile case of a Maryland man being sent to a prison in El Salvador by mistake.

The U.S. Justice Department, which is representing the administration in the case, did not respond to a message seeking comment.

White House Border Czar Tom Homan talks with reporters on the driveway outside the White House West Wing on March 17, 2025. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

WASHINGTON — White House border czar Tom Homan on Monday blamed the parents of U.S. citizen children the Trump administration sent to Honduras over the weekend.

At a Monday morning press conference, Homan defended the government’s actions to remove three young children from two different families alongside their mothers who were in the country without legal authorization but participated in a program that allows otherwise law-abiding migrants to stay in their communities.

“If you enter this country illegally, it’s a crime,” Homan said. “Knowing you’re in this country illegally, you put yourself in that position. You put your family in that position.”

The children, all under the age of 10, were placed on deportation flights to Honduras on Friday after their mothers checked in with a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in New Orleans as part of the Intensive Supervision Appearance Program, which allows immigrants to stay in their communities while undergoing immigration court proceedings.

An attorney for one of the children, Gracie Willis at the National Immigration Project, said the 4-year-old U.S. citizen with Stage 4 cancer was deported without access to his medication.

Homan has argued the mothers requested to be deported with their children, but attorneys for the families argue they were “denied access to legal counsel, and swiftly deported without due process.”

Due process concerns

U.S. District Judge Terry Doughty, whom Trump appointed to a seat on the Louisiana federal bench in 2018, expressed concern that a 2-year-old U.S. citizen had been deported, despite her father’s wishes she remain in the U.S., according to court filings.

Doughty scheduled a May 16 hearing because of his “strong suspicion that the government just deported a U.S. citizen with no meaningful process.”

“The government contends that this is all okay because the mother wishes that the child be deported with her,” Doughty wrote in his order. “But the court doesn’t know that.”

Willis, from the National Immigration Project, raised concerns about a lack of due process and how the deportations have separated families.

“What we saw from ICE over the last several days is horrifying and baffling,” she said in a statement. “These mothers had no opportunity to speak with their co-parents to make the kinds of choices that parents are entitled to make for their children, the kinds of decisions that millions of parents make every day: ‘what is best for our child?’”

Homan has argued the children were deported at the request of the mothers and that the Trump administration was “keeping families together.”

“What we did is remove children with their mothers who requested their children depart with them,” he said. “When a parent says, ‘I want my 2-year-old baby to go with me,’ we made that happen. They weren’t deported. We don’t deport U.S. citizens. The parents made that decision, not the United States government.”

Wisconsin judge

Monday’s remarks from Homan come the day before President Donald Trump will mark the 100th day of his second term. His early days in office have centered on carrying out his campaign promise of mass deportations of millions of people in the U.S. without permanent legal status.

Trump will sign two executive orders on immigration late Monday: one relating to border security and another to require the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to publicly list so-called sanctuary cities that do not coordinate with federal immigration law enforcement.

Homan also stood by the Trump administration’s decision to arrest a federal judge in Wisconsin on the grounds she obstructed immigration officials from detaining a man attending his court hearing. It marked an escalation between the Trump administration and the judiciary branch, raising concerns from Democrats.

The arrest of Judge Hannah Dugan was highly publicized after she was handcuffed in public and FBI Director Kash Patel bragged about the arrest on social media.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said on Fox News that the Trump administration was going to continue to go after judges who “think they’re above the law.”

“When you cross that line to impediment or knowingly harboring, concealing an illegal alien from ICE, you will be prosecuted, judge or not,” Homan said.