The United States Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily stop deporting Venezuelan nationals who are alleged gang members, using an 18th-century wartime law as a legal basis for the order.
"The Government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court," the justices said in an unsigned decision.
On March 15, the Trump administration announced it was invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, which allows the President to detain and deport citizens of "enemy" nations without typical due process. This act has only been invoked three other times in history, all during wartime.
The act was previously invoked during World War II to send Japanese-Americans and Japanese citizens living within the U.S. to internment camps.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed multiple urgent requests with multiple different courts, including the Supreme Court, advocating on behalf of deportees who have not yet had a chance to take their cases to court.
"Without this Court's intervention, dozens or hundreds of proposed class members may be removed to a possible life sentence in El Salvador with no real opportunity to contest their designation or removal," the lawsuit obtained by the BBC read.
"These men were in imminent danger of spending their lives in a horrific foreign prison without ever having had a chance to go to court. We are relieved that the Supreme Court has not permitted the administration to whisk them away the way others were just last month," said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU's lead attorney in the case, in a statement on Saturday.
Originally published on Latin Times
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