The Daily Fuckup

On Friday, May 16, 2025, the Supreme Court stopped the Trump administration from resuming deportations of Venezuelan detainees under the Alien Enemies Act while the case continues to work its way through the courts. The justices acted on an emergency basis and left the broader legal fight unresolved. The immediate effect is to keep the government from removing members of the putative class covered by the challenge until further order of the court.

The order followed a series of lower-court disputes over whether the administration could use the 18th-century wartime statute to move detainees out of the country on short notice. The Supreme Court’s action did not decide whether the administration’s theory will ultimately survive. It focused on the interim question before it: whether removals should stay paused while the litigation proceeds and while detainees have an opportunity to challenge the government’s use of the law.

The case has become one of the clearest tests yet of how far the administration thinks the Alien Enemies Act can reach in immigration enforcement. Trump has presented the removals as a national-security measure. Opponents say the government is trying to use an old wartime power as a shortcut around normal deportation procedures and judicial review. For now, the Supreme Court has not endorsed that broader theory. It has only kept the removals on hold while the legal dispute continues.

The ruling does not settle whether the administration can eventually rely on the act against Venezuelan detainees, and it does not resolve the underlying constitutional questions. But it does mean the government cannot carry out the disputed removals on the timeline it was pursuing. The fight now shifts back to the lower courts, where the facts, the statute, and the scope of the president’s authority will remain in dispute.