Goodbye to Venezuelan Gang Members, For Now

Earlier this evening, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Trump administration on its deportation of Venezuelan gang members. This is a bigger case than the one I wrote about yesterday, and it continues the trend of the Court not being reflexively hostile to the Trump administration.

The New York Times describes the case:

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday night that the Trump administration could continue to deport Venezuelan migrants based on a wartime powers act for now, overturning a lower court that had put a temporary stop to the deportations.

The decision marks a victory for the Trump administration, although the ruling is narrow and focused on the proper venue for the cases, rather than on the administration’s use of a centuries-old law to justify its decision to send planeloads of Venezuelans to El Salvador with little to no due process.

A little editorializing there by the Times. Today’s decision is a blow against judge shopping, which the Democrats have indulged in freely:

The justices did not address the question of whether the Trump administration improperly categorized the Venezuelans as deportable under the Alien Enemies Act, finding the migrants had improperly challenged their deportations in Washington, D.C. The justices determined that the migrants should have raised challenges in Texas, where they were being held.

“The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” according to the court’s order, which was brief and unsigned, as is typical in such emergency applications.

So the Democrats will have to bring their case in Texas, where their chances of getting a Democratic Party judge are far lower than in D.C.–assuming, as always, no corruption in the district court’s clerk’s office. And meanwhile, deportations will continue.

The justices said that the Venezuelan gang members are entitled to judicial process, the only question being where that process should take place:

“As the court stresses, the court’s disagreement with the dissenters is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers — all nine members of the court agree that judicial review is available,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote. “The only question is where that judicial review should occur.”

So pro-illegal immigrant gang Democrats may have lost today’s battle, but they could still win the war. But the war shapes up differently if they don’t get to choose their trial court judges irrespective of normal rules of venue.