US Supreme Court maintains block on Trump deportations under wartime law

(Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday kept in place its block on President Donald Trump's deportations of Venezuelan migrants under a 1798 law historically used only in wartime after their lawyers said the government was set to remove the men without judicial review in violation of a prior order by the justices.

The justices, after ordering on April 19 a temporary stop to the administration's deportations of dozens of migrants being held at a detention center in Texas, granted a request by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys representing the migrants to maintain the halt on the removals for now.

The Supreme Court also clarified that the administration was free to pursue deportations under other provisions of U.S. immigration law. Trump's deportations are part of the Republican president's immigration crackdown since he returned to office in January.

Conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas publicly dissented from Friday's decision.

This was the second time that Trump's actions concerning Venezuelan migrants had come before the Supreme Court in a legal dispute that has raised questions about his administration's willingness to comply with limits set by the nation's highest judicial body.

ACLU lawyers had asked the Supreme Court to intervene after reporting that migrants held at the Bluebonnet immigration detention center were at imminent risk of removal.

The lawyers said that administration officials had not provided the migrants the required notice or opportunity to contest the removals to a prison in El Salvador before many were loaded on buses headed to the airport.

The Supreme Court on April 7 placed limits on how deportations under the Alien Enemies Act may occur even as the legality of that law's use for this purpose is being contested. The justices required that detainees receive notice "within a reasonable time and in such a manner" to challenge the legality of their removal.

The administration accuses the migrants of being members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang originating in Venezuelan prisons that the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Trump has invoked the 1798 Alien Enemies Act in a bid to swiftly deport them.

Relatives of many of the hundreds of deported Venezuelans and their lawyers have denied that they are Tren de Aragua members and have said they were never given the chance to contest the administration's allegations of gang affiliation.

The Alien Enemies Act authorizes the president to deport, detain or place restrictions on individuals whose primary allegiance is to a foreign power and who might pose a national security risk in wartime. The U.S. government last invoked the Alien Enemies Act during World War Two to intern and deport people of Japanese, German and Italian descent.

The Justice Department had told the justices that the request by the migrants to the Supreme Court was premature because "they improperly skipped over the lower courts before asking this one for relief." In a filing, U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer said detainees are receiving advance notice of their removals and have had "adequate time" to file claims for judicial review.

ACLU lawyers pushed back on this assertion, saying that a lower court judge had not acted despite evidence that the migrants were being readied for imminent removal and "would almost certainly have been removed" had the Supreme Court not intervened.

The migrants were loaded on to buses that left the Bluebonnet facility in Texas, only later to be turned around "presumably because of applicants' filing in this court," the lawyers said.

The Trump administration has sent deportees to El Salvador, where they are being detained in the country's maximum-security anti-terrorism prison under a deal in which the United States is paying President Nayib Bukele's government $6 million.

Transferring "large numbers of individuals it intends to remove under the AEA (Alien Enemies Act) between judicial districts and providing English-only AEA notices less than 24 hours before removal and without any explanation as to how the individual may seek judicial review cannot by any stretch be said to comply with this court's order that notice must be sufficient to permit individuals actually to seek habeas review," the ACLU said in a written filing.

Habeas corpus relief refers to the right of detainees to challenge the legality of their detention. It is considered a bedrock right under U.S. law.

(Reporting by Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham)