After Supreme Court Ruling, Lawyers File New Challenge To Deportations Under Alien Enemies Act In Texas

Lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union on Wednesday asked a federal judge in Texas to bar the White House from using the Alien Enemies Act to send Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, the New York Times reports. The filings by the A.C.L.U., submitted in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas, were in direct response to a Supreme Court decision on Monday. That ruling permitted the migrants to challenge efforts to deport them under the wartime law, but only in the place they were being held. The three Venezuelans identified in the Texas filings — albeit only by their initials — had already secured a court order from a federal judge in Washington last month shielding them from being flown to El Salvador under President Trump’s invocation of the act. But the Supreme Court, in its ruling, vacated the order by that judge, James E. Boasberg, saying that the A.C.L.U.’s case on behalf of the men should have been filed in Texas, not Washington.

On Tuesday, the A.C.L.U. filed a similar case in New York, noting that two of the Venezuelans subject to Mr. Trump’s proclamation had been moved from a detention center in Texas to one in the town of Goshen, in Orange County, N.Y. An emergency hearing has been scheduled in that case for Wednesday morning in Federal District Court in Manhattan. Trump’s efforts to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport scores of Venezuelan migrants have set off one of the most contentious legal battles of his second term. It began last month, after the president invoked the act, which has been used only three times since it was passed in 1798, to authorize the deportation of people he claims were members of Tren de Aragua, a violent Venezuelan street gang. The A.C.L.U. immediately challenged Trump’s use of the act in court filings in Washington, even as the administration rushed more than 100 Venezuelan migrants on to planes to El Salvador. Once there, they were put in a megaprison called CECOT, known for its brutal conditions. Lawyers for the A.C.L.U. have said the government unlawfully used the act, which is supposed to be invoked only in times of declared war or during an “invasion” by a foreign nation or government.