US Supreme Court halts deportation of Venezuelans under wartime law

Venezuelans who the Trump administration says are gang members have been deported to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador

The US Supreme Court has ordered the Trump administration to pause the deportation of accused Venezuelan gang members under an 18th-century wartime law.

A civil liberties group is suing the administration over planned deportations of Venezuelans held in a detention centre in north Texas.

On Saturday, the Supreme Court ordered the government to “not remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court”.

Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Samuel Alito dissented.

President Donald Trump had invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and accused Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) of “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion” on US territory.

Out of 261 Venezuelans deported as of 8 April to a notorious mega-jail in El Salvador, 137 were removed under the Alien Enemies Act, a senior administration official told CBS News, the BBC’s US news partner.

A lower court temporarily blocked these deportations on 15 March.

The lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) that resulted in Saturday’s order, the organisation said that without the 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”.

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