The Supreme Court has moved to slow down President Trump's deportation push, sparking a furious response from the president and two of the court's own members.
A 7-2 majority ordered Trump to stop removing illegal aliens being held at a facility in northern Texas until further notice. The justices issued the shock ruling past midnight on April 19.
“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 Supreme Court’s order reads.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) had asked the Supreme Court to shield a group of Venezuelan men in northern Texas from being deported. The court granted the request even as a lower court was still considering it.
Only two justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas - neither of whom Trump appointed himself - objected to the Supreme Court's move, which Alito called "legally questionable."
“I refused to join the Court’s order because we had no good reason to think that, under the circumstances, issuing an order at midnight was necessary or appropriate," he wrote.
The controversy centers on Trump's use of a wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to swiftly remove alleged gang members whom the administration considers to be foreign terrorists.
The president's critics have accused him of ignoring due process, but Trump says he's just doing what the people elected him to do.
"My team is fantastic, doing an incredible job, however, they are being stymied at every turn by even the U.S. Supreme Court, which I have such great respect for, but which seemingly doesn’t want me to send violent criminals and terrorists back to Venezuela, or any other Country, for that matter —People that came here illegally!" Trump wrote on Truth Social.
With its midnight intervention, the Supreme Court signaled a more skeptical approach than it had previously taken toward Trump's aggressive deportation agenda.
The justices previously allowed Trump to use the Alien Enemies Act, but said aliens must be given a reasonable opportunity to contest their removal.
Trump's bold immigration push has set up a dramatic conflict between the White House and the courts, which have gone so far as to order Trump to return illegal aliens to U.S. soil.
The Supreme Court has not gone to that extreme, instructing Trump to "facilitate" the return of a Salvadoran man who was deported to his native country, Kilmar Abrego Garcia. The justices rebuked a liberal judge who used stronger language to demand Garcia's return.
"The district court should clarify its directive, with due regard for the deference owed to the executive branch in the conduct of foreign affairs," the justices wrote.
Meanwhile, the president says the courts are imposing "ridiculous" burdens on his efforts to deport those living in the country illegally.
"We cannot give everyone a trial, because to do so would take, without exaggeration, 200 years. We would need hundreds of thousands of trials for the hundreds of thousands of Illegals we are sending out of the Country. Such a thing is not possible to do," he said.
"What a ridiculous situation we are in!" he wrote.
