US Supreme Court allows Trump to use Alien Enemies Act for deportations

Words just can mean whatever the fuck you want now, I suppose.

Lucky SCOTUS stopped Biden from overstepping Executive Power by forgiving some student debt...

Barrett again... Seems like she's regretting her vote to make trump a dictator.

Random sub stack I found that makes a couple of good points , tl;dr they didn't instantly kill the case so all the pundits can say the rule of law still exists, but this ruling rigs the proceedings going forward in such a way that it's going to be much harder for people facing deportations to win

...the more I read the Court’s Monday night ruling in Trump v. J.G.G., in which a 5-4 majority vacated a pair of temporary restraining orders entered by Chief Judge Boasberg in the Alien Enemy Act case, the more I think that this ruling really is a harbinger, and a profoundly alarming one, at that. To be clear, it’s not a sweeping win for the Trump administration; the Court did not suggest that what Trump is doing is legal, or, just as bad, that it might not be subject to judicial review. Indeed, the Court went out of its way to emphasize that individuals detained under the Act are entitled to due process, including meaningful judicial review.

But much like last Friday’s ruling in the Department of Education grants case, it’s still a ruling by a Court that seems willing to hide behind less-than-obvious legal artifices to make it harder for federal courts to actually restrain conduct by the current administration that everyone believes to be unlawful. As in that decision, here, a 5-4 majority has made it much harder for litigants to bring systemic challenges to what the Trump administration is doing. And especially in the broader context in which the Alien Enemy Act litigation, specifically, has unfolded, the justices in the majority got there by burying their heads in the sand.

...

The short per curiam opinion effectively says two things: First, the Court held that individuals detained and facing removal under the Alien Enemy Act are, contra the Trump administration, absolutely entitled to due process before they are removed, including meaningful judicial review. That should’ve been obvious, but it’s nice having the Supreme Court unanimously reaffirm that point. Indeed, the Court expressly held that “AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.” This is actually good.

But second, the Court also held that such judicial review must come through habeas petitions—not through the APA. In other words, the five individual plaintiffs in J.G.G. need to bring their suit as a habeas petition—and, given where they’re detained, not in the D.C. federal district court. This holding was, suffice it to say, not exactly obvious. Indeed, there are some compelling arguments that, although habeas is a vehicle through which to challenge the government’s use of the Alien Enemy Act, it’s not (and never has been) the exclusive vehicle for doing so. But here we are.

...

... lawyers could presumably try to file a habeas petition in D.C. on behalf of the individuals already removed to El Salvador—one that will depend upon how Abrego Garcia is resolved. But even if the Supreme Court sides with the lower courts there, and holds that federal courts can order the federal government to take steps to bring these folks back if their removals were unlawful, by vacating Boasberg’s TROs, the majority has made that review that much more difficult and potentially ineffective. That’s plenty alarming all by itself.

... going forward, assuming that this Court is going to aggressively enforce the district-of-confinement rule for individuals still in the United States (which I wrote about in the context of the Khalil case), that means habeas petitions will have to be brought in the district in which those individual detainees are each detained. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent raises the specter of individuals being held all over the country, but I think it’s more likely most of these cases end up in the Southern District of Texas—and, thus, in the Fifth Circuit. (Much like the Department of Education ruling is going to likely mean that at least some of the funding cutoff cases end up in the Court of Federal Claims.) ... Trading APA review for habeas, even if the remedies were otherwise commensurate, is trading the ideologically diverse (and national security-experienced) D.C. federal courts for the most right-leaning federal courts in the country. And the justices know that, too.

... regardless of which court conducts the review, there are at least some reasons to fear that the scope of review in a habeas petition won’t be commensurate with what’s available under the APA. Among other things, there’s less case law supporting emergency relief in habeas cases. There are additional practical roadblocks to certifying a class of affected individuals in habeas cases (because each member of the class is presumably challenging their detention, versus seeking facial review of government action). Unlike under the APA, there’s no specter of “universal” relief in a habeas case. And, although Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence plays up the use of habeas historically to prevent unlawful transfers to foreign countries before they happen, the very D.C. Circuit case that he cites in support, “Kiyemba II” (in which he was one of the judges), held that Guantánamo detainees could not use habeas to block their transfer to a foreign country based upon fear that they would be tortured there—so long as the federal government said they wouldn’t be. (I’ve written at some length about how wrong then-Judge Kavanaugh was on this point.)

Thus, there will be judicial review of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemy Act... But the review we end up with will be far more impoverished than what was already unfolding before Chief Judge Boasberg. That review may still suffice in individual cases, but what the Court’s ruling completely refuses to engage with (unlike Justice Sotomayor’s dissent, which tackles it head-on) is how much the Trump administration is attempting to use the Alien Enemy Act systemically—for mass, summary removals rather than case-by-case, individualized adjudications. By relying upon an unpersuasive procedural technicality to force more individualized litigation, the Court is effectively bringing a pea-shooter to a gunfight.

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250408111208/https://www.stevevladeck.com/p/140-the-disturbing-myopia-of-trump

e; added tl;dr

Hey look, the SCROTUS fucked up again.