Supreme Court hands Trump win in effort to deport migrants using controversial 1700s law

The Supreme Court handed President Donald Trump a win Monday afternoon as it allowed his administration to — for now — use a 1700s-era law to deport migrants it alleges are gang members.

The court said Trump's administration can invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which was part of the Alien and Sedition Acts passed by Congress amid heightened tensions with France. The law gives the president wartime powers to detain, relocate, or deport non-citizens from enemy nations.

Trump invoked the act last month to deport migrants that authorities said were members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. This marked the act's first use since World War II.

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Critics have said the deportations were illegal because it the act has traditionally been restricted to wartime scenarios or invasions by foreign governments.

But in an unsigned decision in the case, the Supreme Court allowed in a 5-4 ruling that Trump to invoke the law to expedite deportations while litigation over its use proceeds through lower courts. The court said deported migrants now must be notified they are subject to the act and be given a chance to have their deportation reviewed.

“AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act. The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs,” the court wrote, according to NBC News.

The ruling lifted an order last month that gained national headlines handed down by Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C., who blocked the administration from carrying out deportations using the law. Boasberg has a hearing planned Tuesday on whether to impose a longer-term preliminary injunction.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spoke out against the ruling in her dissent.

“I lament that the Court appears to have embarked on a new era of procedural variability, and that it has done so in such a casual, inequitable, and, in my view, inappropriate manner,” Jackson wrote.