2 judges limit Trump's bid to deport ‘alien enemies' in back-to-back rulings
Supreme Court ruling
earlier this week and warning of the potential for 'irreparable' mistakes.
The ruling by a Trump-appointed judge, which appears limited to defendants currently confined in Texas, came moments after a Clinton-appointed federal judge in New York said he would order the administration to guarantee those alleged 'alien enemies' in his Manhattan-based district a chance to challenge their deportations.
The near-simultaneous rulings further hamstring the Trump administration's efforts to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, by using the two-centuries-old Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used law meant to guard against foreign invasions in wartime. It's the latest legal setback for President Donald Trump's effort to deploy these war powers to summarily deport foreign nationals he labels terrorists.
Many of those targeted by Trump's invocation have claimed they were misidentified as members of the gang. The White House dismissed those claims and initially contended Trump's designation was enough to justify their speedy removals. But the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling Monday that those labeled 'alien enemies' must have a meaningful chance to challenge their deportations.
U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., the Trump appointee in Brownsville, Texas, noted the potential for mistakes similar to the case of an
illegally deported Maryland man
, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. He was sent to a high-security prison in El Salvador as part of a hastily organized mass deportation effort carried out on March 15. The government says Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. without authorization in 2011, but an immigration judge's 2019 ruling ordered that he not be returned to his home country of El Salvador because of the threat of persecution he faced there.
Rodriguez's order
clearly blocks the deportation of anyone being held at the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, Texas, the main immigration detention center the Trump administration used to gather the alleged gang members.
The Texas lawsuit appears to seek relief for all Venezuelans in the U.S. who could be subject to deportation under Trump's order, while the New York lawsuit seeks to apply to those in the district.
The orders the judges issued Wednesday, however, do not go that far.
Although Manhattan U.S. District Judge Alvin Hellerstein didn't make a determination on the class question, he appeared inclined to grant it, saying, 'I think there are issues of fact and law common to the group.'
Hellerstein said that 'given the history, it seems to me that people need to be guaranteed a notice and guaranteed a hearing.'
He added: 'I'm not supposing to make any grand decisions about the Alien Enemies Act. … That would be an issue for another day.'
Hellerstein set the next hearing in the New York case for April 22. Rodriguez set a hearing in the Texas case for Friday.
Last month, Rodriguez
stepped in to block the deportation
of one Venezuelan who appeared to have been scheduled to be placed on one of a trio of flights the Trump administration launched on March 15. Those flights flew more than 200 men to the notorious anti-terrorism prison in El Salvador.
According to his lawyers, Daniel Zacarias-Matos was told on March 14 that he was being deported that day by plane, but the aircraft developed a problem and the flight was canceled. That gave his lawyers time to file
an emergency petition
with Rodriguez, who quickly granted an order temporarily barring him from being deported.
One of his lawyers, Jaime Diez, said in an interview he raced to the detention center to make sure Zacarias-Matos was not loaded onto buses headed for a nearby airport. Diez then
shot video
of one of the last buses carrying deportees as it rolled away from the detention center with a security escort.
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