J USTICE SOTOMAYOR, with whom JUSTICE K AGAN and J USTICE J ACKSON join, and with whom J USTICE BARRETT joins as to Parts II and III–B, dissenting.

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There is, of course, no ongoing war between the United States and Venezuela.

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Congress requires the President to “mak[e] public proclamation” of his intention to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. §21. President Trump did just the opposite. In what can be understood only as covert preparation to skirt both the requirements of the Act and the Constitution’s guarantee of due process, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) began moving Venezuelan migrants from Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention centers across the country to the El Valle Detention Facility in South Texas before the President had even signed the Proclamation. ___ F. Supp. 3d ___, ___ 2025 WL 890401, *3 (D DC, Mar. 24, 2025). The transferred detainees, most of whom denied past or present affiliation with any gang, did not know the reason for their transfer until the evening of Friday, March 14, when they were apparently “pulled from their cells and told that they would be deported the next day to an unknown destination.”

B

Suspecting that the President had covertly signed a Proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act, several lawyers anticipated their clients’ imminent deportation and filed a putative class action in the District of Columbia. App. to Brief in Opposition To Application To Vacate 9a (App. to BIO). They contested that Tren de Aragua had committed or attempted the kind of “ ‘invasion’ ” or “ ‘predatory incursion’ ” required to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. Ibid. They also asserted that it would violate the Due Process Clause to deport their clients before they had any chance to challenge the Government’s allegations of gang membership. Id., at 26a. The plaintiffs did not seek release from custody, but asked the court only to restrain the Government’s planned deportations under the Proclamation. Id., at 9a, 29a.

In the early morning of March 15, the District Court informed the Government of the lawsuit and scheduled an emergency hearing. Despite knowing of plaintiffs’ claim
that it would be unlawful to remove them under the Proclamation, the Government ushered the named plaintiffs onto planes along with dozens of other detainees, all without any opportunity to contact their lawyers, much less notice or opportunity to be heard.