ACLU lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after reporting that the administration was set to imminently remove the migrants without the required notice or opportunity to contest the removals.

The justices on Friday agreed. “Under these circumstances, 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 ruling.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented from Friday’s decision. Alito, in a dissent joined by Thomas, said he did not think the Supreme Court had the power to weigh in at this stage of the case and questioned whether providing relief to the detainees as a group was legal.

The Supreme Court also clarified that the administration was free to pursue deportations under other provisions of US immigration law. Trump’s deportations are part of the Republican president’s immigration crackdown since he returned to office in January.

The relatives of Venezuelan migrants in the US who were flown to a prison in El Salvador by the government, hold protest signs calling for their release. (AP Photo)

This was the second time that Trump’s actions concerning Venezuelan migrants had come before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that has raised questions about his administration’s willingness to comply with limits set by the nation’s highest judicial body.

Lawyers for the migrants said that administration officials had not provided the migrants held at the Bluebonnet immigration detention facility the opportunity for judicial review to contest the removals to a prison in El Salvador before many were loaded on buses headed to the airport – in violation of a prior order by the justices.

The Supreme Court on April 7 placed limits on how deportations under the Alien Enemies Act may occur even as the legality of that law’s use for this purpose is being contested. The justices required that detainees receive notice “within a reasonable time and in such a manner” to challenge the legality of their removal.

‘Particularly weighty’

The interests of the detainees in the case were “particularly weighty” given the Trump administration’s claim in a separate case that it is unable to return to the United States a Salvadoran man who had lived in Maryland and was erroneously deported to El Salvador, the ruling said.

The administration accuses the migrants of being members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang originating in Venezuelan prisons that the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Trump has invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in a bid to swiftly deport them.

Relatives of many of the hundreds of deported Venezuelans and their lawyers have denied that they are Tren de Aragua members and have said they were never given the chance to contest the administration’s allegations of gang affiliation.

The Alien Enemies Act authorizes the president to deport, detain or place restrictions on individuals whose primary allegiance is to a foreign power and who might pose a national security risk in wartime. The US government last invoked the Alien Enemies Act during World War Two to intern and deport people of Japanese, German and Italian descent.

Also Read: US judge allows Trump administration to use Alien Enemies Act for deportations

The Justice Department had told the justices that the request by the migrants to the Supreme Court was premature because “they improperly skipped over the lower courts before asking this one for relief.” In a filing, US Solicitor General D. John Sauer said detainees are receiving advance notice of their removals and have had “adequate time” to file claims for judicial review.

ACLU lawyers pushed back on this assertion, saying that a lower court judge had not acted despite evidence that the migrants were being readied for imminent removal and “would almost certainly have been removed” had the Supreme Court not intervened.

The migrants were loaded on to buses that left the Bluebonnet facility in Texas, only later to be turned around “presumably because of applicants’ filing in this court,” the lawyers said.

The Trump administration has sent deportees to El Salvador, where they are being detained in the country’s maximum-security anti-terrorism prison under a deal in which the United States is paying President Nayib Bukele’s government $6 million.

Transferring “large numbers of individuals it intends to remove under the AEA (Alien Enemies Act) between judicial districts and providing English-only AEA notices less than 24 hours before removal and without any explanation as to how the individual may seek judicial review cannot by any stretch be said to comply with this court’s order that notice must be sufficient to permit individuals actually to seek habeas review,” the ACLU said in a written filing.

Habeas corpus relief refers to the right of detainees to challenge the legality of their detention. It is considered a bedrock right under US law.