New Filing Blows Up Key Parts Of Trump's Alien Enemies Act Defense

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25-04-2025

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A newly unsealed court filing has revealed previously unknown details about the Trump administration's operation to remove Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act and threatens to undermine key elements of its legal defense.
The filing is a declaration by ICE official Carlos D. Cisneros in an Alien Enemies Act case in federal court in the Southern District of Texas. The implications of what Cisneros has revealed could reverberate in AEA cases around the country, including at the Supreme Court.
Timing: The headline news was Cisneros' revelation that detainees are being given 'no less than 12 hours' to decide whether to contest their imminent removal under the AEA and another 24 hours to file a habeas case. This is supposed to satisfy the notice requirement the Supreme Court imposed earlier this month in AEA cases, but it is unlikely any court is going to find the 12/24-hour combo sufficient. By way of comparison, U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney of Colorado earlier this week imposed a 21-day notice requirement and other procedural safeguards on the government in an Alien Enemies Act ruling.
Inconsistency: Legal reporter Chris Geidner has an excellent analysis of how the Cisneros declaration reveals the Trump administration is telling the Supreme Court one thing and apparently doing another. In a different AEA case out of North Texas, Solicitor General John Sauer has told the Supreme Court the administration will not remove AEA detainees who file habeas claims. But the Cisneros declaration reveals that there may be a couple of different exceptions in practice to that general rule, which would undermine if not flat out contradict what the Trump DOJ represented in court.
Imminence: In that North Texas case, where the Supreme Court acted in the middle of the night to block another round of removals, Justice Samuel Alito wondered in his dissent (joined by Justice Clarence Thomas) what all the rush was about. 'The papers before us, while alleging that the applicants were in imminent danger of removal, provide little concrete support for that allegation,' Alito wrote. But the new revelation in the Cisneros declaration about the 12/24-hour combo establishes exactly what the plaintiffs had claimed: Removals were imminent. (Credit to Georgetown Law professor Steve Vladeck for this catch.)
Reuters: The Trump administration moved a Venezuelan man to Texas for possible deportation about a half an hour after U.S. District Judge Stephanie Haines had issued an order blocking his removal from the Western District of Pennsylvania.
Elections Executive Order: U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly temporarily blocked a provision of President Trump's executive order demanding that proof of citizenship be added to some federal voting forms.
Anti-DEI: Federal judges in DC, Maryland, and New Hampshire separately blocked elements of the Education Department's ban on DEI in K-12 schools.
Sanctuary cities: U.S. District Judge William H. Orrick of San Francisco temporarily blocked the Trump administration from withholding funds from sanctuary cities, a replay of a case Orrick had early in Trump I.
President Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate the leading Democratic fundraising platform ActBlue:
A slow-motion train wreck – and a nightmare for any lawyer – has played out since Wednesday in the NYC congestion pricing case. The sequence was as follow:
Wednesday night, DOJ mistakenly uploaded to the public docket an internal letter that contained its legal advice to the Department of Transportation about why its case was a sure loser.
Thursday morning, DOJ asked the judge in the case to remove or permanently seal the 'inadvertently uploaded' letter.
A Department of Transportation spokesperson blasted the DOJ attorneys and questioned whether it was really a mistake: 'Are SDNY lawyers on this case incompetent or was this their attempt to RESIST? At the very least, it's legal malpractice. It's sad to see a premier legal organization continue to fall into such disgrace.'
The Department of Transportation said it was replacing the lawyers involved, who worked in the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, with lawyers from the Main Justice's Civil Division in DC.
The federal judge in the case, Lewis Liman, temporarily sealed the mistakenly filed letter but ordered briefing on (i) whether there's a sufficient basis to seal the letter permanently since it was already made public and widely republished by news outlets; and (ii) whether the inadvertent publication of the letter waived attorney-client privilege.
The cringe outweighs any schadenfreude.
A decade ago, Michelle Fiore of Nevada was a fixture in TPM coverage of far-right politics. This week President Trump pardoned her before her sentencing on a federal fraud conviction. Her crime? Using money collected to honor a slain police officer on personal expenses, including cosmetic surgery.
Former Rep. George Santos (R-NY) is scheduled to be sentenced today in federal court in New York, where he pleaded guilty in his fraud case.
Gov't-wide: President Trump signed an executive order Thursday making it easier to fire probationary government employees.
VA: The Veterans Affairs Department is forcing staff in workforce reduction discussions to sign non-disclosure agreements.
SSA: Acting Social Security Commissioner Leland Dudek is moving to convert the status of many of his agencies employees to the new Schedule F.
On the same day that President Trump plaintively posted to social media 'Vladimir, STOP!' CNN reported that he is 'frustrated' and has privately told advisers that mediating a deal to end the war in Ukraine 'has been more difficult than he anticipated.'
WSJ: Polygraph Threats, Leaks and Infighting: The Chaos Inside Hegseth's Pentagon
AP: Hegseth had an unsecured internet line set up in his office to connect to Signal
NYT: 'Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's personal phone number, the one used in a recent Signal chat, was easily accessible on the internet and public apps as recently as March, potentially exposing national security secrets to foreign adversaries.'
Jay Willis: Let's Take a Look at the Children's Books Sam Alito Is So Afraid Of