In the previous post, I wrote about the Trump gang’s efforts to quickly deport large numbers of Venezuelans using the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 that has only been used three times in its history: the Civil War, World War I, and World War II, claiming that these people were members of the gang Tren de Aragua and formed the invading force of the Venezuelan government.
Today, in a 7-2 opinion (predictably with Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissenting), the Supreme Court ruled that the detainees must be given time to challenge their deportations
The court emphasized that the men — whom the Trump administration has labeled “alien enemies” — are entitled to more due process than the administration has so far provided. That means advance notice of their deportations and a meaningful opportunity to challenge the deportations in court, the justices wrote in an unsigned opinion.
In particular, the justices faulted the administration for its attempt last month to carry out swift deportations just one day after providing a bare-bones deportation notice to the detainees. The Supreme Court intervened at the time to stop those deportations, and in Friday’s decision, the court elaborated on its decision and extended its order blocking them.
“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’s opinion said, without deciding exactly how much notice is required.
A small victory for due process against a government that has no regard for the law or human rights.
I’m surprised. Perhaps as many as four of the gang of six are not entirely shameless. I had thought that two was the most we could hope for. (Barrett seems to care some about the rule of law; and Roberts cares about the court’s reputation.)
Let’s see how they rule in the birthright citizenship case. We should find that out in the next few weeks.
I’m not entirely surprised, though somewhat.
Barrett was always about overturning Roe v Wade and going for the ‘Christian Nation’ concept, but she’s been relatively progressive on some other things. She’s an ideologue, not bought-and-paid-for like Thomas, and on things outside of her particular hobby horses she’s shown a fairly sharp mind on some of this.
Kavanaugh was always a bit of a ‘Rules Lawyer’ looking to figure out ways to twist the words to get his way, but I think even he realizes there’s no way to twist this one that won’t also admit that the Supreme Court has no actual power.
Roberts… has often been about his ‘legacy’, and there was some discussion on various legal blogs as to what would happen when a case with this blatant a level of usurpation of the Court’s authority actually got to the Supreme Court: whether Roberts would stand up to Trump because to do otherwise would be to admit the Court had abdicated all power, or whether Roberts would go along with Trump because if Trump went ahead and broke the law anyway and basically dared the Supreme Court to actually do anything about it, it would humiliate the Court in other ways.
Roberts may finally be realizing the corner he’s painted himself into. The hay made over the way Trump openly thanked him for everything he’d done may have given him a reason to re-think things. We’ll see how long that lasts.
Another possibly good bit of news: the PBS News Hour just had a pretty long story about the Trump family profiting from the Trump presidency, and big part of it was about cryptocurrency. With any luck, folks will become aware that, as Mike the Mad Biologist put it, It’s Still the Emoluments, Stupid.
Lawyers Guns & Money has just commented on this as well:
Court rules 7-2 against Trump administration’s efforts to disappear people without due process
I like the last line in the article, which summarizes some of the ‘who said what’ nicely:
Trump seems to be able to do whaever he wants. So why would he abide by this ruling?
It’ll be very interesting to see if this makes any difference.
The SC has put its foot down. The Trump regime has two options: capitulate and admit their power is NOT unlimited, or ignore the ruling and step into constitutional crisis and dictatorship.
It’s a tribute to the absolute craziness of the world we’re in that I don’t think anyone can reasonably say they know which way this will go.
@sonofrojblake do they seem like they’re interested in doing what courts say?
They’ll ignore this until someone removes them
But it’s not Trump, or even his appointees, who are doing the kidnapping and rendition. Trump’s commands have effect because the ordinary folks who are actually shovelling his manure believe these commands are law. If they get told that his commands are illegal, enough may refuse to carry them out.
This is generally the way of dictators. They have power because so many people believe they do. The real point of all the demonstrations is to show that the US population is not united in accepting his regime, which will give people who do carry his decrees the courage to defy them.
A very VERY small victory for due process. Based on your summation at least, the Court are saying Trump can still deport people, they just have to do it slower and give the
victimsdefendants time to mount a defense (if they can). They didn’t even rule on HOW MUCH advance notice is supposedly required.Is that really all the Court were asked to rule on? No challenge to the legitimacy of invoking the Alien Enemies Act based on made-up claims of an “invasion”?*
And even this lame wrist-slap was too much for Thomas and Alito.
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* Wait — an invasion from VENEZUELA?! One week they’re bumbling incompetent socialists who can’t do anything right, now they’re invading and occupying the USA?! Are the Republicans admitting they didn’t see that “threat” coming until just now?
I don’t think they could have ruled any other way. If they’d let the Trump goons do what they wanted then there would be no check on who they sent off to unaccountable torture prisons. One of the “mistakes” that can be fixed with due process is whether or not the authorities have even apprehended the right person.
With due process, if they abduct someone’s grandma, an American citizen who looks like she could cosplay as Betty White and say she’s a young hispanic male in the country illegally, a judge gets to ask why they’ve made this obvious screw-up. Without due process when does grandma get to bring that question up? Who does she even ask? Her captors? Is she just counting on them being ashamed to continue such a farce? Without an impartial arbiter there’s no question where grandma is headed.
The Trump regime is shameless enough to make these sorts of mistakes deliberately. They might even meme back and forth about it with the Salvadoran dictator as they have with their other mistakes.
Based on recent events, they will try a third: pretend to misunderstand the ruling as being in their favour.