Court rules 7-2 against Trump administration’s efforts to disappear people without due process

The Trump administration has fully (and properly) lost the presumption of good faith in its AEA deportation process on the part of a majority of a Court, including four Republicans:

By the standards of a 7-member per curiam, the last sentence bites Alito and Thomas’s latest authoritarian Catch-22 pretty hard

[image or embed]— Scott Lemieux (@lemieuxlgm.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 1:32 PM

Clean holding that Trump violated due process Classwide relief for targeted migrants Bristling skepticism that this administration can be trusted to keep its word Frustration that the conservative lower courts failed to intervene Yes, this ruling is a big deal. slate.com/news-and-pol…

[image or embed]— Mark Joseph Stern (@mjsdc.bsky.social) May 16, 2025 at 2:53 PM

Alito’s dissent is trademark Alito — a bunch of bland technical-sounding language in defense of the proposition that if people the Trump administration is threatening to send to a life sentence in a foreign torture prison while also claiming they have no legal recourse once outside of American jurisdiction cannot offer something like ironclad ex ante evidence that they’re going to be deported with adequate notice, then the Supreme Court lacks the jurisdiction to intervene even if lower courts are doing nothing to stop the illegal and imminent deportations.

The question of whether Trump is primarily symptom or cause is settled by the fact that Trump’s most uncritical lickspittles and enablers on the Court are the two he didn’t appoint.