Alito Rebukes Fellow Conservative Justices After SCOTUS Halts Trump-Era Deportations

Justice Samuel Alito delivered a sharp dissent following a recent Supreme Court decision that temporarily paused the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members associated with Tren de Aragua under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).

In a late-night, unsigned order issued just before 1 a.m. on Saturday, the Court instructed the Trump administration “not to remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this Court.”

The ruling emphasized that the matter remains under review by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The justices added, “Upon action by the Fifth Circuit, the Solicitor General is invited to file a response to the application before this Court as soon as possible.”

Justice Alito, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, dissented, criticizing the decision to intervene before the appellate court had issued a ruling.

“When this Court rushed to enter its order, the Court of Appeals was considering the issue of emergency relief, and we were informed that a decision would be forthcoming. This Court, however, refused to wait,” Alito wrote in his five-page dissent.

He stressed that the Court’s own guidelines generally prohibit granting emergency stays before lower courts weigh in — “except in the most extraordinary circumstances.”

Alito argued that the order was based largely on unsubstantiated claims made by the detainees' lawyers, who asserted their clients faced “imminent danger of removal” — a claim he said lacked “concrete support.”

Further, he criticized the Court for granting “class-wide relief,” even though the district court had not certified the plaintiffs as representing a broader class, nor had it determined that detainees seeking habeas corpus relief could do so as a group.

“In sum,” Alito wrote, “literally in the middle of the night, the Court issued unprecedented and legally questionable relief without giving the lower courts a chance to rule, without hearing from the opposing party, within eight hours of receiving the application, with dubious factual support for its order, and without providing any explanation for its order.”

“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 concluded.

Alito further stated, “Both the Executive and the Judiciary have an obligation to follow the law. The Executive must proceed under the terms of our order in Trump v. J.G.G., 604 U.S. ___ (2025) (per curiam), and this Court should follow established procedures.”

The dispute stems from a 5-4 decision earlier in April in which the Court found the Trump administration had authority under the AEA to remove individuals deemed threats. However, the Court noted that those affected must be given notice and a chance to contest their removal. The key issue left unresolved was “which court will resolve that challenge.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett, typically aligned with the conservative bloc, joined the Court’s liberal justices in opposing immediate removals. In Saturday’s decision, she again sided with the liberals, along with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in backing the temporary pause.

According to SCOTUS Blog, Trump’s Solicitor D. John Sauer filed a 15-page brief the same afternoon, mirroring many of the arguments laid out in Alito’s dissent.

Sauer explained that “those aliens are Venezuelan nationals who are unlawfully present in the United States and subject to removal under other authorities,” and whom the government had identified as members of the foreign terrorist group Tren de Aragua — making them eligible for removal under the AEA.

He also asserted that “the government has provided advance notice to AEA detainees (including the named petitioners) prior to commencing AEA removals,” giving them time to seek habeas corpus relief, as the Court had previously stipulated.

Sauer urged the Court to lift its stay “and allow the lower courts to address the relevant legal and factual questions in the first instance — including the development of a proper factual record.” Alternatively, he suggested the Court limit the scope of its stay to deportations under the AEA, thereby allowing other removals to proceed under standard immigration law.