In mid-March, the Trump administration sent more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador, using an archaic wartime law to deport many of them without any legal review or due process.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s order to send the Venezuelan nationals to a mega prison in El Salvador. But the Justice Department asked the U.S. Supreme Court to lift the judge’s stay in a lawsuit brought in Washington by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of five Venezuelans detained in Texas.

On Monday, in a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court overturned U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s stay and allowed the Trump administration to resume the deportation flights to El Salvador. However, all nine justices said that the Venezuelan immigrants targeted for removal under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act can challenge their deportations in federal court – but they have to do it in Texas.

What does the ruling mean, and what may come next in the high-stakes legal battle? The Miami Herald answers the key questions.

What is the Alien Enemies Act?

The Alien Enemies Act is a 1798 law that allows the president to arrest, detain and deport immigrants from countries at war with the United States. All citizens of that country in the U.S. who are over age 14 are “liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed, as alien enemies.”

In mid-March, Trump issued a proclamation that authorized the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the notorious Venezuelan Tren de Aragua. In the proclamation, Trump said the gang was “conducting irregular warfare” against the U.S. in coordination with Venezuela leader Nicolas Maduro.

Trump accused the gang of invading the United States and being aligned with the Venezuelan government. On March 15, the Trump administration flew Venezuelans it accused of belonging to the gang to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador as part of a deal it had brokered with the country’s leader, Nayib Bukele.

Before Trump’s invocation, the Act had only been used three times, and only during times of war. That includes Japanese-Americans and Japanese immigrants the federal government put in detention camps during World War II.

What did the Supreme Court ruling say?

The Supreme Court ruled Monday night that Venezuelan citizens with no legal status in the United States do have the right to challenge their deportation under the Alien Enemies Act on an individual basis — not as a class of detainees, as initially proposed in the federal lawsuit filed in Washington — in the state where they’re being detained.

The majority of justices said their legal action should have been filed in Texas, where they are being held, rather than a court in Washington. The majority also said their challenges against the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act should be filed as individual “habeas corpus” petitions — a historic way of fighting detention in a federal court.

“The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” according to the high court’s order, which was brief and unsigned, as is typical in such emergency applications.

In its ruling, however, the Supreme Court did not address the merits of the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act as a legal weapon for deporting mainly violent Venezuelan gang members in this country. That issue is expected to arise during each habeas petition brought by a Venezuelan national being detained for removal by U.S. immigration authorities.

What does the ruling mean for each side?

The Supreme Court’s split decision was considered a victory for the Trump administration because it allowed immigration authorities to resume the Venezuelan deportation flights using the Alien Enemies Act.

But at the same time, all nine justices agreed that Venezuelan nationals facing deportation under the Act have a right to contest in a federal court whether the law, traditionally invoked during wartime, applies to them. That part of the high court’s ruling was considered a victory for the five Venezuelan plaintiffs who initially brought the suit in Washington.

“Although judicial review under the (Alien Enemies Act) is limited, we have held that an individual subject to detention and removal is entitled to ‘judicial review’ as to ‘questions of interpretation and constitutionality’ of the Act as well as whether he or she ‘is in fact an alien enemy fourteen years of age or older,” the court wrote.

All nine justices agreed that the Venezuelan migrants detained in the United States must receive advance notice that the U.S. government seeks to deport them and the opportunity to challenge their deportation before they can be sent to another country, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote in a concurring opinion.

“Importantly, as the Court stresses, the Court’s disagreement with the dissenters is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers — all nine Members of the Court agree that judicial review should occur,” Kavanaugh wrote. “The only question is where that judicial review should occur.”

Lee Gelernt, lead counsel on the case and deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, said that the “critical point of this ruling” was that the Supreme Court had affirmed that individuals must be given due process to challenge the removal under the archaic law.

“That is an important victory,” he said in a statement.

What did the dissenting justices say?

On Monday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the “suspect” legal conclusion of the majority that grants the U.S. government extraordinary power to deport Venezuelan nationals with no legal status in the U.S. to a mega prison in El Salvador under that country’s president.

“It does so without mention of the grave harm plaintiffs will face if they are erroneously removed to El Salvador or regard for the government’s attempts to subvert the judicial process without this litigation,” Sotomayor wrote.

The dissent was signed by liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett.

What are immigration experts saying about the Supreme Court’s ruling?

Experts have noted that many Venezuelans targeted under the Alien Enemies Act will likely not be able to challenge their deportations because they lack access to legal counsel in detention. Non-citizens don’t have a constitutional right to a lawyer in immigration proceedings, as they do in criminal prosecutions. Data shows that most people in immigration detention don’t have lawyers.

Katherine Hawkins, a senior legal analyst at the Project on Government Oversight, told the Herald she thinks that it’s not clear “there will be any attempt” from the Trump administration to comply with the order given that the Supreme Order did not provide specific directions.

“The whole purpose of using the Alien Enemies Act is to avoid individual challenges, and just rush as many people (out of the country) as possible without any due process at all,” Hawkins said.

What’s happened in the case so far?

The Supreme Court’s opinion came after Judge Boasberg in Washington issued a temporary restraining order last month that halted the deportation of Venezuelan nationals being detained in the U.S. under the Alien Enemies Act.

Boasberg originally imposed a 14-day restraining order halting the deportations of alleged members of Tren de Aragua. Despite that order, the Trump administration proceeded with deportation flights to El Salvador, contending that the planes had departed before Boasberg’s order was finalized. More than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members were transported to the prison in El Salvador.

Before the Supreme Court ruling, the judge was mulling whether to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for violating his order to pause the flights to El Salvador.

At a hearing last week, Boasberg strongly suggested the government had purposefully rushed the planes out of the country before he could properly hear the Venezuelan migrants’ case. The judge canceled another hearing on Tuesday following the Supreme Court’s decision allowing the resumption of deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, but his order did not address where the contempt issue stands.

Has the Trump administration made any mistakes using the Alien Enemies Act?

Last week, lawyers for the Trump administration acknowledged in a separate case involving a challenge to the Alien Enemies Act that immigration authorities mistakenly deported a Maryland man to the CECOT mega prison in El Salvador along with members of Tren de Aragua. Despite the admission of an “administrative error,” the lawyers said the government lacks the authority to return him to the United States.

A federal judge in the Maryland case ordered immigration authorities to bring back the man, Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, by 12 midnight Monday.

But Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts issued a temporary administrative stay putting off the Monday deadline, giving the court more time to consider arguments presented by both sides.

Abrego Garcia, who at one time was accused by a government confidential source of being a member of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, was allowed to stay in the United States in 2019 after an immigration judge withheld his removal order to El Salvador.

But in March, Abrego Garcia, whose wife is a U.S. citizen, was stopped by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers who “informed him that his immigration status had changed,” according to his attorneys. Abrego Garcia, the father of a 5-year-old son, was detained and then transferred to a detention center in Texas before being sent to El Salvador.

The Miami Herald and other outlets have also published investigations showing many of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador do not appear to have criminal records in the United States or elsewhere. One CBS investigation found three-quarters of the men seemed to lack any criminal history anywhere.

Several had ongoing asylum cases. At least one was granted refugee status after an extensive, year-long plus process, and others had deportation protections and work permits through Temporary Protected Status. Experts have said that the Trump administration appears to be using tattoos and clothing as a way to identify Tren de Aragua members, but noted that the gang does not use such symbols to mark membership.

“It’s not subject to serious dispute anymore that they did this to innocent people who are non-citizens,” said Hawkins, the analyst at the Project on Government Oversight. “And if there’s no due process, then there’s not really any way for citizens to be safe either.”

What’s going to happen next in the case?

On Tuesday, the American Civil Liberties Union, the New York Civil Liberties Union and the Legal Aid Society filed an emergency lawsuit on behalf of two Venezuelan men currently detained in New York. The two Venezuelan men had previously been detained in Texas and were also plaintiffs in the original case out of Washington, D.C.

The lawsuit argues that the Alien Enemies Act could not be invoked against the Tren de Aragua gang because it is not a nation or a foreign government and that neither the gang nor Venezuela had invaded the United States.

The lawsuit asks the judge to grant protected class status to all immigrant detainees who could be subject to deportation under the act, to declare Trump’s presidential proclamation unlawful, and to block the Trump administration from deporting any other immigrants under the wartime law.

However, it remains to be seen whether the ACLU and the other legal groups can file a class-action case using the two detainees in New York as the initial plaintiffs. In its opinion on Monday, the Supreme Court ruled that each Venezuelan immigrant facing deportation under the Alien Enemies Act must file an individual challenge as a habeas petition. That would seem to preclude any group from pursuing a class-action case.

In light of the Supreme Court’s ruling on jurisdiction, it is expected that the ACLU will also refile its Washington case in Texas on behalf of the remaining three Venezuelan detainees.

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