The Action of the ACLU Against Deportations Using the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the High Court of Criminal Investigations

The Alien Enemies Act was not approved by the Supreme Court, and immigration authorities were moving to quickly restart the removal of illegal immigrants.

“We are not going to reveal the details of counter terrorism operations, and we are complying with the Supreme Court’s ruling,” said Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia MacLaughlin.

The number of people that may be deported from this facility was not confirmed by NPR. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security refused to give any further information about the case.

Federal judges in several districts have blocked the deportation of people using the Alien Enemies Act. The ACLU sued the administration again this week, in order to block deportations at several additional Texas detention centers, including Bluebonnet, a facility in west-central Texas about halfway between Lubbock and Fort Worth.

ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt told NPR that migrants at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas in the far northern end of the state were being loaded onto buses for removal late Friday.

On Friday, two federal judges refused to step in as lawyers for the men launched a desperate legal campaign to prevent their deportation. The court of appeals hasn’t acted yet.

“It doesn’t say you have the right to contest, you have the right to challenge anything. “You’re getting removed because there’s a notice here,” said Attorney Drew Ensign, who works for the DOJ. “That certainly seems problematic to me.”

At the emergency hearing Friday, justice department lawyer Ensign said department officials were not aware of any planned deportation flights on Friday and there are no deportation plans for Saturday, but the government “reserves the right to remove people on Saturday.”

A ruling in favor of the Trump administration’s deportation of Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet detention center in the Far Northern end of the State of Texas

“I’m sympathetic to everything you are saying, I just don’t think I have the power,” judge Boasburg told the ACLU attorney, and said that it is now in the Supreme Court’s hands.

In a brief order, the court directed the Trump administration not to remove Venezuelans held in the Bluebonnet Detention Center “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 a brief early Saturday note. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

The act has only been invoked a few times in the US before, most recently during World War II. The immigration status of immigrants who were identified as being part of the gang was considered a factor in their removal by the Trump administration.

Bluebonnet is located in the far Northern end of Texas, but there wasn’t any such order in the area.

But the ACLU’s Friday filing included sworn declarations from three separate immigration lawyers who said their clients in Bluebonnet were given paperwork indicating they were members of Tren de Aragua and could be deported by Saturday. In one instance, Karene Brown said that her client was told to sign documents in English even though he only spoke Spanish.

Also Friday, a Massachusetts judge made permanent his temporary ban on the administration deporting immigrants who have exhausted their appeals to countries other than their home countries unless they are informed of their destination and given a chance to object if they’d face torture or death there.