The president is right on the merits of border security and repatriation of illegals, but it’s time for congressional Republicans to back him up with legislative authority for expedited deportations.
You may not like Donald Trump’s methods, but at least he’s an open book. He tells you exactly what he’s doing and why. That’s quite a contrast from the previous administration, which propped up a guy suffering severe cognitive decline while denying everything and likely covering up a prostate cancer diagnosis.
Nevertheless, another court ruled against President Donald Trump’s efforts to clean up the humanitarian crisis created by Joe Biden’s open border. In a 7-2 ruling Friday afternoon, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked Trump’s deportations under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act (AEA). A group of Venezuelan “migrants” (read: members of a foreign terrorist gang) challenged Trump’s use of the law to deport them without full due process.
“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the unsigned majority said. “But it is not optimal for this Court, far removed from the circumstances on the ground, to determine in the first instance the precise process necessary to satisfy the Constitution in this case. We remand the case to the Fifth Circuit for that purpose.” The majority added, “To be clear, we decide today only that the detainees are entitled to more notice than was given on April 18.”
Let’s take a quick stroll down memory lane.
In 2022, I labeled Biden’s open border an intentional invasion. That’s not “invasion” in the legal sense, of course, but that’s effectively what it is when you allow more than 10 million people to cross our border illegally and stay here.
Trump won the 2024 election, powered by promises to fix the economy and immigration. Within a couple of months, he had effectively sealed the border. We didn’t need the bogus legislation Biden pushed in early 2024 to scapegoat Republicans. We just, as Trump put it, “needed a new president.”
Deportations, however, are where Trump has run into a border wall. Rather than follow full due process for criminal aliens, which would take an outlandish amount of time, Trump has worked to get them out quickly. That’s a desirable goal. He even played the Abrego Garcia deportation case brilliantly — from a political standpoint, at least — getting Democrats to go all in supporting a “Maryland man” who turned out to be a wife-beating human trafficker almost certainly at least affiliated with MS-13.
Legally, Trump’s strategy may have backfired. Essentially thumbing his nose at the courts, he never brought Garcia back to the U.S. to deport him again the right way. The Supreme Court justices factored that into their ruling, saying, “The detainees’ interests at stake are accordingly particularly weighty.”
On May 8, I warned Trump that railing against judges and pushing the legal envelope might lead to more court defeats, especially given Chief Justice John Roberts’s strong tendency to defend the courts at all costs. I hate to say, “I told you so.”
That does not mean I agree with activist judges.
Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented in the president’s favor, and I think they were right. Alito’s dissent specifically took issue with the jurisdiction of the courts. The Supreme Court “has blazed a new trail,” he wrote. “It has plucked a case from a district court and decided important issues in the first instance. To my eyes, that looks far too much like an expansion of our original jurisdiction.”
The situation is utterly preposterous. As Trump put it on Truth Social, “The Supreme Court of the United States is not allowing me to do what I was elected to do. Sleepy Joe Biden allowed MILLIONS of Criminal Aliens to come into our Country without any ‘PROCESS’ but, in order to get them out of our Country, we have to go through a long and extended PROCESS.” Left-wing agitators are ensuring that the process takes as long as possible, all to keep as many people in the U.S. as possible.
“THE SUPREME COURT WON’T ALLOW US TO GET CRIMINALS OUT OF OUR COUNTRY!” Trump complained in another Truth Social post. That’s not actually what the Court said, but point taken. Trump’s goal is to remove dangerous illegals as quickly as possible, not spend years tied up in court hearings over each one. The Court said deportations under other laws may proceed, just not the ones under the AEA. No aliens have been freed as a result, either.
But some justices won’t be won over by Trump’s caps-lock Truth Social rants. Neither will they look favorably on his administration’s gamesmanship over other court rulings or musing about suspending habeas corpus without Congress and despite a Supreme Court warning in early April in its first ruling on the AEA. In fact, you can bet Roberts at least is watching Trump’s reaction here as the Court weighs last week’s oral arguments on the president’s birthright citizenship executive order.
Meanwhile, Georgia Republican Congressman Mike Collins is right. “So it’s legal for a president to ship millions of illegal aliens into our country but it’s illegal to send them home?” he rhetorically asked on X. “The system is broken. The Supreme Court failed us. Whose country is this anymore?”
I’d advise Collins to introduce legislation that Trump can use to expedite deportations. Focus on those who commit crimes (in addition to illegal crossing) and those who came during the last four years. Get them out quickly. If Congress explicitly empowers the president to facilitate such deportations, Trump would win more court cases.
Trump is right on the merits of border security, and he needs all hands on deck. Unfortunately, congressional Republicans seem to prefer to sit on the sidelines while judge-shopping left-wingers dictate immigration policy.
https://patriotpost.us/articles/117302-supreme-court-blocks-trumps-alien-enemies-act-deportations-2025-05-19
