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Saturday, April 19, 2025

Supreme Court blocks Trump’s planned deportation of Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador

Conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, were the two that dissented against the decision.

• April 19, 2025
Donald Trump
Donald Trump [Credit: BBC]

The United States Supreme Court on Saturday issued a temporary order blocking President Donald Trump from carrying out deportation of another group of Venezuelan accused of gangterism.

In a 7-2 majority vote, the Supreme Court issued a brief unsigned order barring the Trump administration from removing Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center under a wartime 1798 Alien Enemies Act “until further order of this court”

“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 in its order that gave no reasoning, as is typical in emergency cases.

Conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, were the two that dissented against the decision.

The American apex court was forced to step in on the matter after two federal judges and the fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals refused to take any action as lawyers for the men launched a desperate legal campaign to prevent their deportation from the United States.

Citing two sources familiar with the situation, the New York Times reported that more than 50 Venezuelan were scheduled to be flown out from an immigration detention centre in Anson, Texas to presumably the Centre for Terrorism Confinement in El Salvador, prompting the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to approach the Supreme Court.

“We are deeply relieved that the court has temporarily blocked the removals. These individuals were in imminent danger of spending the rest of their lives in a brutal Salvadoran prison without ever having had any due process,” ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt said in an email.

Mr Trump banked on his friendship with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele to summarily send undocumented immigrants suspected of being gang members to mega prison in the Latin American country irrespective of their nationalities.

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