Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., backed by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that the court’s overnight order blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of alleged Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gangsters under a wartime law was not “necessary or appropriate.” Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, said it was “questionable,” and they did not follow legal precedent.
He said the order to block under the Alien Enemies Act was “hastily and prematurely granted.” He said, “Both the executive and the judiciary have an obligation to follow the law.”
The fact that the Supreme Court honored this TRO in the middle of the night without proper cause is a bad sign for the administration.
It’s too bad they didn’t see fit to block the unvetted illegal immigration.
The radical ACLU rushed to several courts to get the late-night order. They said the Trump administration was planning to deport more Venezuelan migrants [Tren de Aragua], presumably to El Salvador, with little to no due process under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.
“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, the court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief,” Justice Alito wrote in his dissent, “without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”
Justice Alito said that he had refused to join the court’s order because “we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate.”
It’s not at all clear to me that the Supreme Court had any appellate statutory jurisdiction in this case.
According to Alito, the Supreme Court only had jurisdiction if the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals had jurisdiction first. And the Fifth Circuit could only act if the order appealed from was a denial of a preliminary injunction—not a temporary restraining order (TRO).
Alito made it clear that the far-left groups like the ACLU were manipulating the process by prematurely appealing something that wasn’t even formally denied. The High Court, according to Alito, took the bait—something he says violates precedent and basic legal procedure.
The emergency request did not stem from a real, appealable decision. Instead, the ACLU argued the district court had constructively denied a request by not acting fast enough.
“This Court had jurisdiction only if the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction of the applicants’ appeal, and the Court of Appeals had jurisdiction only if the supposed order that the applicants appealed amounted to the denial of a preliminary injunction,” Alito wrote.
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