The Supreme Court on Friday afternoon extended its ban on the removal from the United States of Venezuelan men currently in immigration custody in the northern region of Texas. In an eight-page unsigned opinion, the justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court for another look and blocked the Trump administration from removing any of the men from the United States under an 18th-century wartime law until the appeals are resolved.
The court instructed the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit to determine the kind of procedures to which detainees are entitled to challenge the removals. But it indicated that the procedures that the government used in April, when it was ready to carry out removals before the Supreme Court stepped in, were not enough to satisfy the Constitution’s guarantee of fair treatment.
Justice Samuel Alito dissented from the court’s order, in a 14-page opinion joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. In Alito’s view, the Supreme Court had “no authority to issue any relief.”
Friday’s opinion was yet another chapter in a dispute that began in March, when the Trump administration initiated efforts to remove noncitizens who it designated as members of a Venezuelan gang, known as