Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito filed a strongly worded dissent from the court’s order issued early April 19 that temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting alleged members of the Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua.
The dissenting opinion, which was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, was posted on the court’s website early on April 20.
“In sum, literally in the middle of the night, 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.”
“Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law. The Executive must proceed under the terms of our order in Trump v. J.G.G., and this Court should follow established procedures,” Alito wrote.
The justices acted even though “it is not clear the Court had jurisdiction,” or authority to hear the case, he wrote.
“The papers before us, while alleging that the applicants were in imminent danger of removal, provided little concrete support for that allegation,” Alito wrote.
In Trump v. J.G.G., the Supreme Court on April 7 granted the president’s request to pause a federal district judge’s orders preventing his administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport suspected members of Tren de Aragua but determined that detainees must be given an opportunity to challenge their removal.
The unsigned one-page administrative stay issued early April 19 to which Alito referred directed the federal government “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”
An administrative stay gives the justices more time to consider the emergency request to block the deportations. That order did not provide an explanation of why the court acted.