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    After Meeting Wrongly Deported Man, Van Hollen Accuses Trump of Defying Courts

    Senator Chris Van Hollen on Sunday accused the Trump administration of “outright defying” court orders to return a wrongly deported Maryland man whom Mr. Van Hollen met with in El Salvador last week, and he urged the administration to stop releasing unfavorable records about the man.“They are flouting the courts as we speak,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Facilitating his return means something more than doing nothing, and they are doing nothing.”Mr. Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat, traveled to El Salvador last week to press for the release of the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, who was deported to a notorious Salvadoran prison in March in what an administration lawyer described as an “administrative error.”A federal appeals court on Thursday ordered the Trump administration to take a more active role in bringing back Mr. Abrego Garcia, a few days after the Supreme Court ruled that the government should “facilitate” his return from El Salvador.Instead, the White House has publicized an allegation of domestic abuse from Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife from 2021, when she sought a protective order. Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife said last week that the two “were able to work through this situation privately.”The administration also cited a police filing from a Tennessee trooper who stopped Mr. Abrego Garcia on a highway in 2022 and raised suspicion of human trafficking. Federal law enforcement officials instructed the trooper not to detain him, and Mr. Abrego Garcia’s wife has said he routinely drove workers to their jobs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Alito Releases Dissent in Supreme Court Decision Blocking Deportations

    Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented in the Supreme Court’s decision on Saturday to block the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th century wartime law, calling the court’s order “hastily and prematurely granted.”In his five-page dissent released on Saturday shortly before midnight, Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, wrote that in his view, the court’s decision to intervene overnight was not “necessary or appropriate.”The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order came after a fast-moving legal battle late Friday. The American Civil Liberties Union had rushed to several lower courts, then to the Supreme Court, claiming that the Trump administration was planning to deport more Venezuelan migrants, presumably to El Salvador, with little to no due process under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.The Supreme Court’s decision ordered a pause on the deportations of the detainees while it considers the emergency application.Read Justice Alito’s DissentJustice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote that the Supreme Court’s decision to block the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan migrants under a wartime law was premature.Read Document 5 pagesThe order suggested a deep skepticism on the court about whether the Trump administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling that said detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, “within a reasonable time,” and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move.“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.” More

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    Read Justice Samuel Alito’s Dissent in the Alien Enemies Act Case

    4
    A.A.R.P. v. TRUMP
    ALITO, J., dissenting
    with 24 hours to respond, and was poised to rule ex-
    peditiously. See ECF Doc. 41, at 3-4. But the Dis-
    trict Court dissolved the Government’s obligation to
    respond after counsel for applicants filed their hasty
    appeal which, in the District Court’s view, deprived
    it of jurisdiction to rule. Id., at 4-5.
    • The papers before us, while alleging that the appli-
    cants were in imminent danger of removal, provided
    little concrete support for that allegation. Members
    of this Court have repeatedly insisted that an All
    Writs Act injunction pending appeal may only be
    granted when, among other things, “the legal rights
    at issue are indisputably clear and, even then, spar-
    ingly and only in the most critical and exigent cir-
    cumstances.” South Bay United Pentecostal Church
    v. Newsom, 590 U. S.
    (2020) (ROBERTS, C. J.,
    concurring in denial of application for injunctive re-
    lief) (slip op., at 2) (internal quotation marks omit-
    ted) (quoting S. Shapiro, K. Geller, T. Bishop, E.
    Hartnett, D. Himmelfarb, Supreme Court Practice
    §17.4, p. 17-9 (11th ed. 2019)); see also Hobby Lobby
    Stores, Inc. v. Sebelius, 568 U. S. 1401, 1403 (2012)
    (SOTOMAYOR, J., in chambers); Lux v. Rodrigues,
    561 U. S. 1306, 1307 (2010) (ROBERTS, C. J., in
    chambers).
    -”
    • Although this Court did not hear directly from the
    Government regarding any planned deportations
    under the Alien Enemies Act in this matter, an at-
    torney representing the Government in a different
    matter, J. G. G. v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-766 (DC), in-
    formed the District Court in that case during a hear-
    ing yesterday evening that no such deportations
    were then planned to occur either yesterday, April
    18, or today, April 19.

    Although the Court provided class-wide relief, the More

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    Inside the Urgent Fight Over the Trump Administration’s New Deportation Effort

    The push to deport a group of Venezuelans raises questions about whether the government is following a Supreme Court order requiring that migrants receive due process.On Thursday evening, lawyers helping Venezuelan immigrants most at risk of being removed under an 18th-century wartime powers act received an ominous alert: U.S. immigration officials were handing out notices at a detention facility in Texas, informing migrants that they were considered enemies under the law and would be removed from the country.“I am a law enforcement officer authorized to apprehend, restrain and remove alien enemies,” read the notice, a copy of which was filed in federal court by the American Civil Liberties Union. “Accordingly, under the Alien Enemies Act, you have been determined to be an alien enemy subject to apprehension, restraint and removal from the United States.”The notice said the migrant could make a phone call but did not specify to whom. The single-page notice also did not mention any way to appeal the order.The Supreme Court ruled this month that migrants must receive advance notice that they are subject to removal under the rarely invoked wartime powers law — and that they must have an opportunity to challenge their removal in court.News of the notices being handed out at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, warning of impending deportations prompted a flurry of legal actions by the A.C.L.U. on Friday in several courts. Early Saturday, the Supreme Court stepped in with unusual speed, ruling that no flights could depart.“The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court,” the court said. It is unclear when the justices will make a ruling on whether deportation flights can continue.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Administration Asks Justices to Reject A.C.L.U. Request to Pause Deportations

    Trump administration lawyers urged the Supreme Court in a court filing Saturday afternoon to reject an emergency request to temporarily block deportations of Venezuelans under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law.Solicitor General D. John Sauer asked the justices to “dissolve” the administrative stay they had issued early Saturday that blocked the deportations while they considered the application, and to allow lower courts to weigh in before intervening further in the case.The deportations remain paused while the justices consider the matter. In emergency applications, the Supreme Court can act at any time.In his filing, Mr. Sauer called the request by lawyers for the migrants that the justices step in “fatally premature” and argued that they had “improperly skipped over the lower courts.”He said that the government had provided advance notice to detainees subject to imminent deportation and that they “have had adequate time to file” claims challenging their removal. Mr. Sauer added that the government had agreed it would not deport any detainees with pending claims.The 17-page court filing came hours after a rare overnight ruling by the justices, who in a one-page, unsigned order had blocked the Trump administration from deporting the migrants.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    An Urgent Supreme Court Order Protecting Migrants Was Built for Speed

    There are sculptures of tortoises scattered around the Supreme Court grounds. They symbolize, the court’s website says, “the slow and steady pace of justice.”But the court can move fast when it wants to, busting through protocols and conventions. It did so around 1 a.m. on Saturday, blocking the Trump administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan migrants accused of being gang members under a rarely invoked 18th-century wartime law.The court’s unsigned, one-paragraph order was extraordinary in many ways. Perhaps most important, it indicated a deep skepticism about whether the administration could be trusted to live up to the key part of an earlier ruling after the government had deported a different group of migrants to a prison in El Salvador.That unsigned and apparently unanimous ruling, issued April 7, said that detainees were entitled to be notified if the government intended to deport them under the law, “within a reasonable time,” and in a way that would allow the deportees to challenge the move in court before their removal.There were indications late Friday that the administration was poised to violate both the spirit and letter of that ruling. Lawyers for the detainees said their clients were given notices that they were eligible to be deported under the law, the Alien Enemies Act. The notices were written in English, a language many of them do not speak, the lawyers said. And they provided no realistic opportunity to go to court.The American Civil Liberties Union, racing against the clock, filed its emergency application to the Supreme Court on Friday evening — Good Friday, as it happened — and urged the court to take immediate action to protect the detainees as part of a proposed class action.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    A Timeline of the Trump Administration’s Use of the Alien Enemies Act

    In the 36 days since President Trump invoked a powerful wartime law to deport Venezuelan migrants accused of gang membership, a complex and high-risk legal battle has played out in the federal courts.The Supreme Court has weighed in twice, issuing orders limiting the government’s use of the law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. The court’s latest order, which came around 1 a.m. on Saturday, blocked the deportations of Venezuelans held in Texas hours after the American Civil Liberties Union said the Trump administration was preparing to expel them without due process.At times, the Trump administration has been accused of disregarding judicial orders as it proceeds with its immigration policies and deportation efforts, deepening legal scholars’ concern that the country could be facing a constitutional crisis.Here is a timeline:March 14: The Trump administration issued an executive order invoking the Alien Enemies Act, but the order was not immediately made public. The proclamation said that the government was targeting the violent Venezuelan street gang Tren de Aragua, which it said was threatening an invasion of the United States. The Alien Enemies Act allows the government to detain and expel immigrants age 14 or older without a court hearing when the United States is invaded or at war. It is the fourth time the law has been invoked in American history.March 15: Fearing that the Trump administration was preparing to immediately expel Venezuelans in custody without hearings, the A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit in federal court in Washington seeking to block the president from invoking the law. The same day, the administration published the executive order. In a hastily scheduled virtual hearing, a federal judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, was told by the A.C.L.U. that planes were leaving the United States with Venezuelans. He ordered the government not to deport anyone under the law and to return any planes that had already taken off, “however that’s accomplished.”March 16: On social media, El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, published a video of men being led off a plane in handcuffs and taken into a prison in his country. Mr. Bukele posted an article about Judge Boasberg’s order and wrote, “Oopsie… Too late.” The Trump administration insisted it did not violate Judge Boasberg’s order. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said in a statement that federal courts “have no jurisdiction” over the president’s handling of foreign affairs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Administration Blames Boasberg for Escalating Tensions Between Courts and White House

    After attacking judges and repeatedly sidestepping their orders, the Trump administration has accused a federal judge in Washington of escalating tensions between the judicial and executive branches by seeking to hold the White House accountable for its courtroom behavior.The accusation against the judge, James E. Boasberg, came in a court filing early Friday morning by the Justice Department. In it, department lawyers asked the federal appeals court that sits over Judge Boasberg to prevent him from opening an expansive contempt inquiry into whether the White House violated an order he issued in March to stop flights of Venezuelan migrants from being sent to El Salvador under the authority of a powerful wartime statute.Much of the filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia read like a normal legal brief, laying out the government’s challenge to a judicial order it did not like. But in its opening line, department lawyers made clear that they believed Judge Boasberg’s recent threat to open criminal contempt proceedings in the deportation case represented another salvo in an increasingly bitter battle between the White House and the courts.“‘Occasions for constitutional confrontation between the two branches should be avoided whenever possible,’” the department lawyers wrote, failing to mention their own role in fostering such confrontations. “The district court’s criminal contempt order instead escalates the constitutional stakes by infringing core executive prerogatives.”The Justice Department’s attempt to blame Judge Boasberg for raising the temperature came as another federal judge, in another deportation case, has opened her own high-stakes inquiry into whether the administration has violated court orders.In that case, Judge Paula Xinis announced on Tuesday in Federal District Court in Maryland that the administration in the next two weeks would have to answer questions about why it had so far apparently failed to comply with directions from the Supreme Court to “facilitate” the release of a Maryland man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, from the same Salvadoran prison to which the Venezuelan migrants had been sent.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More