A.A.R.P. v. Trump

In 2025, the United States State Department designated the Venezuelan organization Tren de Aragua (TdA) as a foreign terrorist organization. President Donald Trump (defendant) invoked the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to detain and remove from the United States Venezuelan nationals whom authorities had identified as members of TdA. Detainees A.A.R.P. and W.M.M., along with a putative class of similarly situated detainees (collectively, the detainees) (plaintiffs), brought an action in federal district court in Texas, seeking a temporary restraining order (TRO) to prevent summary removal under the AEA. The district court denied relief, and within hours, the detainees received notices that they would be removed under the AEA that night or the following day. The notices contained no information about how the detainees could contest removal. The detainees moved for an emergency TRO. After the district court had not ruled on the motion for over 12 hours, the detainees appealed the district court’s constructive denial of their motion to the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. The detainees also applied to the United States Supreme Court for a temporary injunction. After assessing the circumstances and the government’s actions and arguments in similar recent matters, the Supreme Court ordered the government not to remove any member of the detainee class. The Fifth Circuit then dismissed the detainees’ appeal for lack of jurisdiction, finding that the detainees had not given the district court enough time to act on the TRO motion. The Supreme Court treated the detainees’ application for injunctive relief as a petition for a writ of certiorari from the Fifth Circuit’s decision.