Supreme Court halts deportation of 200 migrants from North Texas detention facility

On Friday, the U.S. Supreme Court prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from deporting nearly 200 Venezuelan detainees to El Salvador from the Bluebonnet Detention Center in North Texas — a move that drew a verbal rebuke from one of the court’s most right-wing members.

In a rare overnight ruling delivered around midnight Friday, the high court halted the deportation and all future deportations from the facility north of Abilene under the Alien Enemies Act “until further order from this court.” The justices rendered the decision after lawyers representing the detainees issued an emergency plea on Friday. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Alito’s dissent, sent around midnight Saturday, blasted his colleagues’ decision to halt the deportation “literally in the middle of the night,” calling the decision “legally questionable.” His colleagues also broke standard SCOTUS protocol to issue the ruling without waiting for Alito to file his dissent.

“The Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief 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,” Alito wrote.

“I 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,” he added.

ACLU lawyer Lee Galernt told NPR late Friday that the migrants were being loaded into buses for removal. At some point, while the buses were in transit from Abilene to Dallas, they were ordered to turn around.
“I certainly think that the middle-of-the-night, swiftly issued order was unusual and out of regular practice, but I do not think that the Supreme Court overstepped any of its jurisdictional boundaries in the order that they are permitted under procedural laws,” Austin-based immigration attorney Katie Lincoln-Goldfinch told the Current.

Lincoln-Goldfinch added that Alito “mischaracterized” the impending threat to the group by using “mental gymnastics” to suggest they wouldn’t be deported immediately.

“It appears as though they did what needed to happen in order to stop the deportation of these men,” the attorney said. “Because if you base what’s happened on similar cases, it appears that, had they been deported, they would not have been returned regardless of whether the court ordered them to be returned.”
As news spread through activist circles that a mass deportation was imminent on Friday, Texas politicians began sounding the alarm as well.

The prisoners were scheduled to be flown to El Salvador from the Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport. Dallas Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett criticized the Dallas ICE office for agreeing to participate in the impending removal.

“Let me be clear: this is not just cruel — it is lawless,” Crockett said in an Instagram post. “I refuse to stay quiet while families are being torn apart, and lives are being put at risk.”

Many of the prisoners were scheduled to be deported without official removal orders, and there were reports others were being forced to sign papers in English, a language they didn’t understand. The prisoners were given less than 24 hours’ notice of their imminent deportation.
“I certainly think it’s within the realm of reasonableness to suspect that the Trump administration was acting swiftly in an attempt to avoid judicial review of their actions by only providing 24 hours’ notice and only providing the notice in English,” Lincoln Goldfinch told the Current.

The Supreme Court’s overnight ruling applies to any migrant being detained in the Northern District of Texas under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th Century “zombie law” the Trump administration has revived to justify its expulsions. The 1798 wartime provision, mostly dormant since its establishment, enables migrants to be deported without due process amid a declared war or invasion by another nation.

The law has been leveraged three times before, all during times of war, but Trump argues that he has the right to invoke it now because the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is “invading” the United States. Courts haven’t definitively ruled whether the law can be used for the current administration’s wave of deportations under the guise of an “invasion” by the transnational criminal organization.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg on March 15 barred the government from removing anyone, anywhere in the country, under the Alien Enemies Act. However, on April 7, the Supreme Court granted President Trump’s request to put Boasberg’s order on hold.

Therefore, Alien Enemies Act-related deportations will have to be handled by the Supreme Court on a district-by-district basis, Lincoln-Goldfinch said. That’s why the Supreme Court’s overnight decision only applies to this North Texas district going forward.

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This article appears in Apr 16-29, 2025.