The president signed a declaration in March to allow the removal of suspects in Tren de Aragua under the alien enemy laws.
The Trump administration urged the Supreme Court on May 12 to dissolve the bloc, issued last month, preventing the government from deporting Venezuelan gang members under alien enemy law.
The president invoked the Alien Enemy Act of 1798 to allow “immediate anxiety, detention and removal” of members of the group, who are Venezuelan citizens over the age of 14 and are Venezuelan citizens who are not US citizens or legal permanent residents.
Class action lawsuits involve one or more plaintiffs suing on behalf of “class” or suing a large group of people who claim that they suffered the same injuries for the defendant. Federal and state court rules govern whether class actions are recognized and allowed to proceed. Until a class is certified, members are called estimations or estimations of members of the class.
Sauer writes that the Department of Homeland Security “estimates that there are 176 presumed class members.”
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“This court order has assured that even under non-(alien enemy) authorities that these 176 presumed class members would be removed, so the government is restraining these aliens instead of eliminating the many presumed class members that can be removed under non-(alien enemy) authorities.”
These detainees “have proven particularly dangerous to maintain in long-term detention. Recently, around 23 estimated classes of members have barricaded their homes for several hours, threatening to take hostages and harm (immigration and customs enforcement) officers,” he writes.
“Moving such prisoners to other facilities creates the continued risk of prison recruitment and expansion of Tren de Aragua (TDA) gang activity within the United States.”
Sauer added that “members of the putative class were not appropriate parties and received appropriate notices and opportunities to pursue habeas protection.”
Habeas Corpus, the Latin word for “You should have a body,” refers to the right of an individual who appears before a judge to challenge their confinement.
Sauer’s application came after a detainee’s lawyer asked the Supreme Court on May 11 to keep the block in place.
The case includes AARP and WMM, the initials of two detained men who are petitioners in the suit before the Supreme Court.
However, Hendricks writes that individual circumstances of detainees are so different that they cannot meet the court’s “uniform requirements.”
“Detainees can pursue their rights of residence through their own arguments and should not be wiped out by a wide range of challenges that could remain in litigation for a long period of time. Therefore, the court has refused to certify rank,” the judge wrote.
The detainees argued that government actions are “illegal with regard to all presumed class members,” and if this is correct, the declaration is illegal, but “but if (detainees) lose in the merits of that claim, relief may only be appropriate for some members of the class,” the judge wrote.
In the May 11 application, an ACLU Foundation lawyer wrote that Hendrix argued that injunctions against the declaration were not available in individual cases to prevent removal under the “Alien Enemy Law,” the circuit.
By refusing to acknowledge the class, individual detainees “overwhelmingly unrepresented” responded to government actions “in a very short time frame” and said “urgent applications to this court continue, if not hundreds, if not hundreds.”
The Supreme Court will maintain an injunction against the declaration “while this issue will proceed in the lower court,” granting a certiorari warrant or “providing guidance on rank recognition,” the lawyer wrote. They added that “all other lower courts to consider the matter have banned removal under the alien enemy laws while judicial review is underway.”
A certiorari warrant is a court order that allows a judge to hear the appeal and move forward. When certiorari is granted, the Supreme Court usually has oral arguments in cases.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote the dissent, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson. Judge Amy Connie Barrett has partially joined the Sotomayor opponents.
Sam Dorman contributed to this report.
