Latest news with #JamesWesleyHendrix
Wall Street Journal
20-05-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
A Supreme Court Injustice to a District Judge
The Supreme Court held last week that the government needs to provide more notice to alleged alien enemies before deporting them. The 7-2 ruling in A.A.R.P. v. Trump wasn't itself a surprise; the court had already signaled skepticism of the president's use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. But in the unsigned opinion, the justices did an injustice to James Wesley Hendrix, the presiding judge in Lubbock, Texas. The high court accused Judge Hendrix of 'inaction'—of failing to act quickly enough and thereby denying the aliens due process. In dissent, Justice Samuel Alito (joined by Justice Clarence Thomas) said this accusation was 'unfair' and that 'we should commend' the judge's 'careful approach.' The dissenters are right. Judge Hendrix's service was exemplary. The majority was wrong to malign this judge and sent a disturbing message about procedural norms.
The Guardian
18-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
ACLU urges US supreme court to block ‘imminent' deportations of Venezuelans
The American Civil Liberties Union asked the US supreme court to block what the group called the imminent deportation of a new group of Venezuelan men detained in Texas without the judicial review previously ordered by the court. In an emergency Friday court filing, ACLU lawyers said dozens of Venezuelan men held in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Bluebonnet detention center in Texas were given notices indicating they were classified as members of the Tren de Aragua gang and would be deported under the Alien Enemies Act, and were told 'that the removals are imminent and will happen tonight or tomorrow'. The ACLU has already sued to block deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of two Venezuelans held in the Texas detention center and is asking a judge to issue an order barring removals of any immigrants in the region under the law. In the new emergency filing, the ACLU warned immigration authorities were accusing other Venezuelan men held there of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang that would make them subject to deportation. The supreme court has allowed deportations under the 1798 law, but ruled unanimously they could proceed only if those about to be removed had a chance to argue their case in court and were given 'a reasonable time' to contest their pending removals. The ACLU said a number of the men in Texas had already been loaded on a bus and urged the court to rule before they could be deported. Federal judges in Colorado, New York and southern Texas have issued orders barring the removal of detainees under the AEA until the administration provides a process for them to make claims in court. But there's been no such order issued in the area of Texas that covers Bluebonnet, which is located 24 miles north of the city of Abilene in the far northern end of the state. District judge James Wesley Hendrix this week declined to bar the administration from removing the two men identified in the ACLU lawsuit because immigration officials filed sworn declarations that they would not be immediately deported. But the ACLU's Friday filing includes sworn declarations from three separate immigration lawyers who said their clients in Bluebonnet were given paperwork indicating they were members of Tren de Aragua and could be deported by Saturday. In one case, immigration lawyer Karene Brown said her client, identified by initials and who only spoke Spanish, was told to sign papers in English. 'Ice informed FGM that these papers were coming from the president, and that he will be deported even if he did not sign it,' Brown wrote. The ACLU asked Hendrix to issue a temporary order halting any such deportations. Later on Friday, with no response from Hendrix, the ACLU asked district judge James Boasberg in Washington to issue a similar emergency order, saying they had information that detainees were being loaded on buses. In their court filing, lawyers say clients received a document Friday from immigration officials, titled 'Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal under the Alien Enemies Act'. It reads: 'You have been determined to be … a member of Tren de Aragua.' 'You have been determined to be an alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States … This is not a removal under the Immigration and Nationality Act,' the notice reads. Writing on X, Pramila Jayapal, a Washington Democrat, denounced the reported plan to deport more Venezuelans under the 1798 law as a violation of the supreme court's ruling 'that Trump had to give people adequate notice before deporting them'. 'We cannot stand by,' Jayapal wrote, as the Trump administration 'continues to disappear people'.
CBS News
18-04-2025
- Politics
- CBS News
Advocates urge judge to bar Alien Enemies Act expulsions of migrants they say face imminent deportation
Advocates on Friday filed an emergency motion asking a federal judge in Texas to bar the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrant detainees they said are at risk of being expelled under the Alien Enemies Act, the 18th-century wartime law at the center of a legal battle. The American Civil Liberties Union asked U.S. District Court Judge James Wesley Hendrix to issue a temporary restraining order preventing officials from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelan men detained at an immigration detention center in Ansen, Texas, located within his judicial district. The ACLU said it heard from lawyers and relatives of some of the men held at the Ansen detention facility that their clients and loved ones had been given notices telling them they were slated to be deported under the wartime law. The organization, relying on declarations from lawyers and advocates, said the men were accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, the Venezuelan gang President Trump has made into a focal point of his crackdown on illegal immigration. Citing the March 15 deportations of scores of migrants who were taken to El Salvador's notorious Center for the Confinement of Terrorism, or CECOT, mega-prison, the ACLU implored Hendrix to act quickly. "(G)iven the brutal nature of the Salvadoran prison where other Venezuelan men were sent under the (Alien Enemies Act) last month, the irreparable harm to them is manifest," the ACLU's emergency motion said. Asked about the ACLU's filing, Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said, "For the safety of our law enforcement, we cannot disclose details about upcoming removal and deportation operations." The Department of Justice has not filed a response in court as of Friday early afternoon. Mr. Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act in March to order officials to immediately detain and remove Venezuelan migrants with alleged ties to Tren de Aragua, arguing that they were invading or staging an incursion into the U.S. The law had previously only been invoked three times in U.S. history, including during World War II, when it was used to justify the detention of noncitizens from Italy, Germany and Japan. The administration used the wartime law to deport many of the 238 Venezuelans it sent to El Salvador on the weekend of March 15, so they could be imprisoned at the CECOT prison. The operation quickly ignited a legal battle that led a federal judge earlier this week to find the administration in "criminal contempt" for ignoring his directive to turn around the deportation flights transporting the detainees. While the Trump administration called the deportees sent to El Salvador terrorists, criminals and gangsters, a 60 Minutes investigation could not find criminal records for 75% of the 238 Venezuelan men imprisoned at CECOT as part of the March 15 operation. Earlier this month, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the Trump administration to carry out expulsions under the Alien Enemies Act but only if it provided notices to detainees that allowed them to challenge their detention in federal court before any deportation. Since then, the ACLU has convinced federal judges in New York, Colorado and Texas to temporarily block officials from citing the wartime powers to deport migrants detained in their judicial districts. But Hendrix on Thursday declined to issue a similar order for the Northern District of Texas, where the Ansen facility is located. In one of the declarations filed by the ACLU on Friday, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society said her client, held at the Ansen facility, told her he had been informed officials are accusing him of being a Tren de Aragua member and that he would be deported as an "alien enemy." The attorney said her client refused to sign papers he was given by detention facility staff because they were in English and he could not understand what they said. Another declaration identified a Venezuelan teenager held in Ansen as one of those at risk of being deported. His attorney said his client had been questioned by immigration authorities about a Facebook photo with a water gun after he was arrested in March, alongside his father.
