President Trump has accelerated a multipronged, methodically planned strategy to push the Supreme Court to bless his power to deport vastly more people with vastly fewer judicial restraints, top officials tell Axios.
- Trump officials see at least five questions, detailed below, that they hope the Supreme Court will answer.
Why it matters: Trump’s plan revolves around two cases and obscure laws that have ignited lawsuits and sent shockwaves through the immigration system over successive weekends:
- Invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport accused Venezuelan gang members without immigration hearings. Nearly 140 were flown out of the U.S. on Saturday in a controversial operation that left a federal district judge fuming that his order to turn the plane around had been ignored.
- Using the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 to detain pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who helped lead protests at Columbia University. The administration says the courts have little say over Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s determination that Khalil should be deported as a national security risk for protesting against U.S. foreign policy.
Zoom in: Between the two cases, Trump administration officials and their allies see five major questions they’d like to put before the Supreme Court.
- Does a peacetime president have the right to deport noncitizens under the war-time Alien Enemies Act — even if there’s no declared war against a foreign adversary?
- Should a single federal judge in a district court have the power to block a president’s deportation program nationwide?
- Can that federal judge’s order extend to international waters and demand that a plane full of deportees turn around mid-flight?
- Does a green card holder like Khalil have speech rights that protect him from deportation? Or can the secretary of state unilaterally declare his speech “adverse” to U.S. foreign policy interests because the government alleges it aligns with the terror group Hamas?
- Can the secretary of state’s power to deport immigrants based on foreign-policy concerns extend to so many student visa holders that some colleges won’t be able to admit foreign-exchange students?
Zoom out: “When you broaden that concept,” a senior Justice Department official told Axios, “every single noncitizen who actively supports Hamas is subject to a determination by Secretary Rubio that they lose their status — and become exactly like Khalil and are immediately deportable.”
By Marc Caputo
