Justices have been asked to stay lower court orders.
The Trump administration on March 28 asked the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene in a case involving President Donald Trump’s declaration of an invasion by a terrorist gang.
Administration lawyers asked justices to stay lower court orders, which would enable officials to resume deportations of illegal immigrants under a law called the Alien Enemies Act.
An appeals court on Wednesday upheld a lower court order that prevents the administration from deporting members of the Tren de Aragua gang under Trump’s invocation, unless officials have another legitimate reason to do so, such as an administrative judge’s removal order.
“That order is forcing the United States to harbor individuals whom national-security officials have identified as members of a foreign terrorist organization bent upon grievously harming Americans,” lawyers for the government told the Supreme Court on Friday.
The situation also “jeopardize[s] sensitive diplomatic negotiations and delicate national-security operations,” they added.
Trump said in a recent proclamation that Tren de Aragua has been perpetrating “an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States.” He directed officials to apprehend and deport members of the gang.
Two planes carrying gang members took off on March 15 for El Salvador. U.S. District Judge James Boasberg that day ordered no additional removals unless they were based on reasons besides the Alien Enemies Act invocation.
Boasberg is considering whether to extend his temporary restraining order, which is currently set to expire on March 29. Lawyers representing Venezuelan nationals told the judge in a filing this week that he should keep the order in place because Trump’s proclamation “improperly overrides statutory protections for noncitizens seeking humanitarian relief by subjecting them to removal without meaningful consideration of their claims.”
A majority of a U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in its opinion this week said that “there is neither jurisdiction nor reason for this court to interfere at this very preliminary stage or to allow the government to singlehandedly moot the Plaintiffs’ claims by immediately removing them beyond the reach of their lawyers or the court.”
