President Donald Trump took a victory lap Monday after the Supreme Court ruled that his hotly disputed deportations of Venezuelans could resume for now—but with a major caveat.
Justices ruled in a 5-4 split that the deportation of Venezuelan nationals under a rarely invoked wartime authority could continue, but the Supreme Court also agreed unanimously that migrants must be given due process before their removal.
The justices did not address the constitutionality of Trump’s invocation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans accused by the government of ties to the gang Tren de Aragua. Instead, they said the migrants’ counsels should have filed their lawsuit in Texas, where they are detained, rather than in Washington, D.C.
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“The detainees subject to removal orders under the AEA are entitled to notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal,” the court said. “The only question is which court will resolve that challenge. We hold that venue lies in the district of confinement.”
Still, the president saw the ruling as a victory. “The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”
Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Clarence Thomas voted to lift a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking deportation flights. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined liberal justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson in dissenting.
In her dissenting opinion that blasted the majority’s “fly-by-night approach” and “rushed conclusion,” Jackson said the temporary restraining order would have prevented “immediate harm to the targeted individuals while the court considered the lawfulness of the government’s conduct.”
“The President of the United States has invoked a centuries-old wartime statute to whisk people away to a notoriously brutal, foreign-run prison,” she wrote. “For lovers of liberty, this should be quite concerning. Surely, the question of whether such government action is consistent with our Constitution and laws warrants considerable thought and attention from the judiciary.”
The Supreme Court’s ruling came with a caveat: that detainees must be notified about their removal “within a reasonable time” and in a manner that will allow them to “actually seek” relief in the proper venue—something the White House has previously said “hell no” to.
Sotomayor warned that the deportation of “even one individual” without due process would put the government “in direct contravention of an edict by the United States Supreme Court.”
Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff for policy, attacked Democrats last week for demanding due process for migrants.
“They have the temerity to say that every single invader that Joe Biden let in should get their own individual judicial trial before they’re deported. One at a time. Each one,” he told Fox News.
“It’s a million-dollar trial in front of a communist judge to decide whether or not we can send them home,” Miller said. “How about hell no? How about we pick them up and get them out of this country so they can’t hurt anyone else?”
Trump administration officials have chosen to focus on their win in the high-profile legal showdown.
Attorney General Pam Bondi called the Supreme Court ruling “a landmark victory for the rule of law.”
“An activist judge in Washington, D.C. does not have the jurisdiction to seize control of President Trump’s authority to conduct foreign policy and keep the American people safe,” she said.
Vice President JD Vance said the Supreme Court “rejected the idea that far-left judges in D.C. can overrule President Trump’s immigration enforcement.”
“This is a major loss for the lunatics and a major win for the American people,” he wrote in an X post.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the ruling proved that the Trump administration had “always been right from the beginning.”
Miller warned that “foreign terrorists will be arrested and expelled” now that the Alien Enemies Act is “in full effect.”
Earlier Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to pause a midnight deadline for the Trump administration to bring back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who the government admitted was mistakenly deported to El Salvador last month due to an “administrative error.”
A 60 Minutes investigation into 238 Venezuelan migrants taken to El Salvador found that 75 percent of them have no criminal records, 22 percent had a criminal history—mostly for non-violent offenses like theft, shoplifting, and trespassing—and 3 percent had unclear records.
