Trump Fumes After Supreme Court Rules Venezuelan Illegals Can’t Be Deported (For Now)

Update (1715ET): President Trump took to TruthSocial to issue his brief but terse statement:

“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!”

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The Supreme Court ruled this afternoon to keep in place its block on President Trump’s deportations of (alleged) Venezuelan gang members under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime after their ACLU lawyers said the government was set to remove the men without judicial review in violation of a prior order by the justices.

The Supreme Court has previously issued two orders stemming from those cases.

Justices agreed that the president could rely on the centuries-old wartime law to remove immigrants from the country – provided they first have an opportunity to challenge those claims in court – and then temporarily blocked the government from deporting another group of Venezuelans in Texas while their lawyers scrambled to challenge the allegations against them.

In his proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, Trump stated that “all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of [Tren de Aragua], are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.”

The 7-2 decision clarified an unusual order issued by the justices in the early hours of April 19 that hit pause on any government plans to deport people held in northern Texas.

Over the dissents of conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, the justices in the latest unsigned decision slammed the Trump admin for only giving the detainees 24 hours to launch legal challenges.

“Notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the court wrote in its unsigned opinion.  

“But it is not optimal for this Court, far removed from the circumstances on the ground, to determine in the first instance the precise process necessary to satisfy the Constitution in this case. We remand the case to the Fifth Circuit for that purpose,” the opinion continued.

However, as The Hill reports, the justices declined the ACLU’s additional request to leapfrog the lower courts to immediately take up the issue of whether President Trump can invoke the rarely used law outside of wartime.

Instead, the case will return to the lower courts alongside a handful of other challenges being brought by the civil rights group around the country. 

So it’s legal for a president to ship millions of illegal aliens into our country but it’s illegal to send them home?

The system is broken. The Supreme Court failed us.

Whose country is this anymore?

— Rep. Mike Collins (@RepMikeCollins) May 16, 2025

The issue could ultimately return to the justices, who directed the lower courts to act “expeditiously.”

Now, we all anxiously await President Trump’s response to this decision…