The case before the court revolved around the Trump administration’s rapid removal of hundreds of Venezuelan and Salvadoran immigrants who it had deemed “alien enemies” after Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to label certain foreign gangs as invading armies. The detainees were, without evidence, identified as gang members and sent off to a prison in El Salvador where no one has ever left. These removals occurred as District Court Judge James Boasberg had ordered them to stop. But the administration ignored his order. The administration appealed to the Supreme Court to reverse Boasberg’s temporary restraining order halting all similar future removals as he continued to hear the case.
The five conservative justices, however, intervened to short circuit the ordinary review process in the lower courts in order to stop those judges from slowing Trump’s removals, albeit with the allowance that detainees have the right to challenge their detention. Those challenges, however, must come on an individual basis and only in the jurisdiction of their detention.
Since the administration is quickly whisking any detained immigrant off to prisons in Louisiana or Texas, those challenges will occur within the jurisdiction of the Fifth Circuit Courts. The Fifth Circuit is the most conservative, most Trump-y federal court in the entire country. It boasts numerous appellate judges who are actively auditioning for a Trump Supreme Court appointment, including Judge James Ho, who has already endorsed Trump’s novel declaration that immigration can be an “invasion.” The speed at which detainees are moved across the country also makes it nearly impossible for someone to know where to file a habeas petition.
The justices who intervened in this case know that they are pushing any habeas challenge brought by Alien Enemy Act detainees into the Fifth Circuit, where they are likely to face the most hostile audience for such claims.
This decision to intervene, craft new precedent on detention and removal and undermine the lower courts is “as inexplicable as it is dangerous,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
“In its rush to decide the issue now, the Court halts the lower court’s work and forces us to decide the matter after mere days of deliberation and without adequate time to weigh the parties’ arguments or the full record of the District Court’s proceedings,” Sotomayor wrote.
In an even more pointed statement, Jackson wrote in a separate solo dissent that the five conservatives in the majority are setting new precedent in a “casual, inequitable, and, in my view, inappropriate manner.”
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