Trump admin asks Supreme Court to 'dissolve' ruling pausing Venezuelan deportations, let it play out in lower court

The Trump administration on Saturday asked the Supreme Court to "dissolve" the ruling it issued earlier in the day, which said that federal immigration and law enforcement agents could not continue to conduct deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. This followed the Supreme Court's emergency action in response to an ACLU filing demanding that the deportations be stopped.

In their attempt to stop the deportation of 50 Venezuelans from a facility in Anson, Texas, on Friday, the ACLU filed their case in three courts: the Northern District of Texas, the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans, and the Supreme Court. The Northern District of Texas rejected the ACLU's bid to stop the deportations, but the Supreme Court noted in their unsigned decision that the case "is currently pending" before the Fifth Circuit.

Solicitor General D. John Sauer said in his petition that the Supreme Court must allow the case to go through the lower courts before getting involved, saying that the justices had "improperly skipped over the lower courts." He also took aim at the ACLU, saying that they had "rushed to an appeals court and the Supreme Court without giving lower courts time to consider the case," per The New York Times.

"Nonetheless, without waiting for the government to file its opposition brief and after giving the district court just 42 minutes to rule, applicants immediately sought emergency relief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and then in this court," Sauer said in his 17-page filing.

The ACLU had claimed that the 50 deportable illegal immigrants housed in Anson had not been given enough notice, but Sauer bucked that, saying that they had been given "adequate" warning of their impending deportation.

In their ruling putting a pause on the deportations, the Supreme Court said, "The government is directed not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court."

The ACLU has referred to the illegal immigrants as a "class" and in their petition to the Supreme Court, indicated that "the justices should protect the detainees as part of a proposed class action," per the Times. Sauer's response to that was that the detainees and illegal immigrants slated for deportation under the Alien Enemies Act are not a class because each case is "inherently too individualized" for them to be considered all as one.

The ACLU has been backing illegal immigrants' rights to enter and remain in the United States since the first Trump administration. They backed the Biden administration's ending of the Remain in Mexico policy, which meant that asylum seekers should remain in Mexico while their asylum cases make their way through the courts. They called Remain in Mexico "cruel, depraved, and illegal."

The Trump administration has been working with any and all means necessary to reverse the disastrous open border policies of former President Joe Biden. These include reimplementing Remain in Mexico, terminating temporary protected status, greater scrutiny of visas, limiting asylum and refugee claims, tightening up border security, deporting criminals, revoking social security numbers held by illegal immigrants, conducting workplace raids and fining companies that employ illegal immigrants, designating gangs as terrorist groups, and other measures.