Supreme Court Hides Behind Ridiculous Procedural Argument To Allow Human Trafficking To Continue

Legal Issues

from the we're-supposed-to-be-better-than-this dept

The Supreme Court yesterday effectively provided the executive branch with a technical manual for legally disappearing people to foreign slave labor camps. While claiming to require “due process,” the Court’s ruling dismantles real protections by treating fundamental human rights violations as mere procedural technicalities that can be overcome with minimal paperwork.

We’ve been covering this administration’s attempts to create a program of trafficking people to El Salvadoran slave labor camps — from their claims that due process doesn’t apply to their mockery of judges who try to stop them. Now the Supreme Court has provided its blessing for the government’s abuse of the horrific Alien Enemies Act, so long as the government follows a few minimal procedures.

The Court’s ruling in the challenge to the administration’s Alien Enemies Act trafficking scheme dissolves Judge Boasberg’s injunction while pretending to care about due process. The Court’s sole concession? People must get a “reasonable” amount of time to file individual habeas petitions before being disappeared — a theoretical protection that will prove meaningless for most victims who lack the resources or legal representation to file complex federal court challenges in time.

Some courts still understand what’s at stake. The same day in a separate case, the Fourth Circuit upheld an order requiring the return of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. Judge Stephanie Thacker cut through the procedural nonsense:

The United States Government has no legal authority to snatch a person who is lawfully present in the United States off the street and remove him from the country without due process. The Government’s contention otherwise, and its argument that the federal courts are powerless to intervene, are unconscionable

Even stalwart conservative Judge Wilkinson, while quibbling over whether courts can demand (versus ordering the US government to “facilitate”) Garcia’s return, acknowledged the government’s fundamental error in that case. But while that battle continues — with Roberts putting the order on hold for more briefing today — the Supreme Court has already made its broader position clear. In dissolving Judge Boasberg’s injunction against the entire trafficking program, the Court revealed its deeply troubling approach to fundamental human rights.

The Court’s approach is concerning on multiple levels. First, as habeas expert Lee Kovarsky details in a devastating analysis, the majority deliberately misrepresents precedent, conflating ordinary detention cases with state-sponsored human trafficking to pretend this extraordinary situation fits neatly within normal habeas doctrine. This intellectual dishonesty enables human rights violations while providing only the thinnest veneer of due process — requiring individual habeas petitions that the Court knows most victims won’t have the resources or legal representation to file in time.

The Court’s four female justices, in dissent, lay bare the majority’s stark hypocrisy. Justice Sotomayor’s dissent is particularly devastating, pointing out an absurd contradiction: while all nine justices agreed that even alleged gang members deserve due process, the majority simultaneously dissolved an order preventing people from being trafficked without any process at all. As she writes:

In light of this agreement, the Court’s decision to intervene in this litigation is as inexplicable as it is dangerous. Recall that, when the District Court issued its temporary restraining order on March 15, 2025, the Government was engaged in a covert operation to deport dozens of immigrants without notice or an opportunity for hearings. The Court’s ruling today means that those deportations violated the Due Process Clause’s most fundamental protections. See ante, at 3 (reiterating that notice and an opportunity for a hearing are required before a deportation under the Alien Enemies Act). The District Court rightly intervened to prohibit temporarily the Government from deporting more individuals in this manner, based on its correct assessment that the plaintiffs were likely entitled to more process. 2025 WL 890401, *2.

Against the backdrop of the U. S. Government’s unprecedented deportation of dozens of immigrants to a foreign prison without due process, a majority of this Court sees fit to vacate the District Court’s order. The reason, apparently, is that the majority thinks plaintiffs’ claims should have been styled as habeas actions and filed in the districts of their detention. In reaching that result, the majority flouts well-established limits on its jurisdiction, creates new law on the emergency docket, and elides the serious threat our intervention poses to the lives of individual detainees.

Basically: if we all agree that the government has to give everyone due process, why the fuck is the majority getting rid of the district court’s order that required exactly that?

The majority’s actions are doubly troubling because they’re using the shadow docket — generally meant for genuine emergencies and (usually) maintaining the status quo — to create sweeping new law without proper briefing. This isn’t just procedurally suspect, it’s dangerous. The Court is fundamentally reshaping the government’s power to traffic people to foreign slave labor camps without the careful consideration and full briefing such a momentous change demands.

Justice Jackson’s dissent captures the gravity of this abuse:

The President of the United States has invoked a centuries-old wartime statute to whisk people away to a notoriously brutal, foreign-run prison. For lovers of liberty, this should be quite concerning. Surely, the question whether such Government action is consistent with our Constitution and laws warrants considerable thought and attention from the Judiciary. That was why the District Court issued a temporary restraining order to prevent immediate harm to the targeted individuals while the court considered the lawfulness of the Government’s conduct. But this Court now sees fit to intervene, hastily dashing off a four-paragraph per curiam opinion discarding the District Court’s order based solely on a new legal pronouncement that, one might have thought, would require significant deliberation.

The contrast could not be starker: four justices recognize this as a defining moment for American human rights and due process, while the majority treats state-sponsored human trafficking as a mere administrative puzzle to be solved through casual procedural hairsplitting. It’s not just the majority’s callous disregard for human rights that’s shocking — it’s their seeming inability to even recognize the gravity of what’s at stake.

History will judge this moment harshly. When faced with an unprecedented executive power grab to disappear people to foreign slave labor camps, the Supreme Court’s majority responded not by defending fundamental constitutional rights, but by writing a technical manual for how to make human trafficking technically legal. In doing so, they’ve failed not just the immediate victims of this program, but their core duty to protect basic human rights and liberty against government overreach.

Filed Under: abrego garcia, alien enemies act, due process, el salvador, habeas corpus, human trafficking, john roberts, shadow docket, supreme court