It was a midnight ruling—quiet, terse, and desperate. Yet, for hundreds of Venezuelan migrants detained at the Bluebonnet facility in Texas, it may have been the only thing standing between them and a brutal Salvadoran prison. In a brief but vital order, the U.S. Supreme Court blocked, for now, the Trump administration’s latest use of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act, a centuries-old wartime law now weaponized to deport people en masse with no due process.
The court’s intervention—over the dissent of Justices Alito and Thomas—was not just a procedural win for the ACLU. It was a moment of constitutional clarity in an administration increasingly defined by its contempt for the law—or was it?
This latest episode—where detainees were being loaded onto buses under the cover of night—is not a legal aberration. It is the logical extension of a worldview President Trump has made explicit: civil liberties are conditional, immigration law is a tool of retribution, and the courts are obstacles to be skirted, not institutions to be respected.
And if you think it stops with noncitizens, think again.
As we noted yesterday: “Home-growns are next.”
Those four words, spoken by Trump in a chilling aside to El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, have reverberated far beyond the Oval Office. They weren’t meant for official transcripts, but they landed like a punch: “Home-growns”—meaning American citizens—would be next in line for foreign detention.
Trump was referencing the Salvadoran mega-prison where hundreds of migrants—many of whom had lawful status or pending claims—were already being sent. Now, he suggested, it was time to expand the scope.
The phrase echoes the worst instincts of authoritarian regimes: criminalize dissent, strip people of legal protections, then export the problem. It also punctures the illusion that U.S. citizens, by virtue of birthright or paperwork, are immune from the excesses of a deportation machine increasingly untethered from constitutional checks.
But the courts, at least for now, are still standing.
In Boston, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking the State Department from enforcing a Trump-era executive order that barred transgender and nonbinary Americans from updating the sex designation on their passports. The court found the policy likely unconstitutional—a rare and overdue rebuke to a mandate that attempted to erase identities through bureaucratic fiat.
“This ruling affirms the inherent dignity of our clients,” said Jessie Rossman of the ACLU of Massachusetts. “By forcing people to carry documents that directly contradict their identities, the Trump administration is attacking the very foundations of our right to privacy and the freedom to be ourselves.”
Yet again, we are watching the courts do what Congress has failed to: enforce the Constitution.
The challenges are formidable. Trump’s second administration, already awash in executive orders targeting immigrants, queer people, student protesters, and asylum seekers, is now testing the edges of legality with alarming speed. The White House is clearly betting that if it moves fast enough, legal relief won’t come in time. In some cases, it hasn’t.
Consider the Venezuelans detained at Bluebonnet. According to the ACLU, some were handed removal paperwork in English despite only speaking Spanish. Others were told they were being deported “by order of the president” with no mention of their right to contest removal. Deportation under the Alien Enemies Act—a statute used previously in just three other moments in U.S. history—has become the Trump administration’s favorite blunt instrument. The only requirement: label the target a threat.
In this case, the administration has alleged, without meaningful review, that detainees are members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The allegation alone is enough. You’re not entitled to see the evidence. You don’t get a hearing. You get a one-way ticket to El Salvador.
Make no mistake: this is the playbook. Draconian policy, scattershot due process, and enough deniability to muddle the press coverage. What’s new is the extent to which these tools are now being turned not just on undocumented immigrants, but on international students, lawful residents, asylum seekers—and possibly soon, U.S. citizens.
When the ACLU sued the Trump administration for targeting international students and revoking their F-1 visas, they described what has become a recurring theme: a sweeping policy executed without notice, recourse, or justification. Nearly 1,100 students at over 170 institutions had their visas revoked mid-semester, with no opportunity to challenge the decision. The administration’s message was simple: legal status is conditional, and we decide the conditions.
As Trump’s assistant Secretary of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, put it, “When you break our laws and advocate for violence and terrorism, that privilege should be revoked.” But many of the students hadn’t broken any laws—and protesting on campus is not terrorism. In fact, the ACLU found that the administration had particularly targeted students who joined protests against Israel’s war in Gaza.
The throughline here is disturbing. Dissent becomes criminalized. Bureaucracy becomes a tool of ideological punishment. And courts become, in many cases, the last thread holding back systemic abuse.
Of course, not all judges have stepped up. Some, like U.S. District Judge James Wesley Hendrix in northern Texas, declined to issue a restraining order for detainees at Bluebonnet, despite acknowledging that removals were imminent and legal questions unresolved. Others, like Judge James Boasberg in Washington, found their hands tied by a Supreme Court ruling that said only judges in the detainee’s jurisdiction can halt removal.
This fragmented patchwork of judicial authority has allowed ICE and DHS to jurisdiction-shop—strategically moving detainees to facilities where no court orders are in place. In doing so, they’re playing a dangerous game of procedural whack-a-mole with human lives.
That makes the Supreme Court’s temporary injunction in the Bluebonnet case all the more critical. It’s not a final ruling. It’s not permanent relief. But it buys time. And time is the one thing advocates never seem to have enough of.
The larger question now is whether this moment will be remembered as a temporary interruption—or the start of something much darker. The Trump administration has already shown its willingness to ignore court orders, defy due process, and invent legal justifications after the fact. It’s not hard to imagine a near future in which the courts are either stacked, sidelined, or ignored entirely.
What’s also clear is that the administration’s deportation policies are not about public safety. They are about power. Power to erase people, power to punish protest, power to reshape the nation by expelling those who do not fit an imposed narrative of citizenship and allegiance.
And it is not limited to people without papers. “Home-growns are next” wasn’t a slip of the tongue. It was a threat, a signal, and a blueprint.
Which brings us back to the courts—and to the advocates who, night after night, emergency motion after emergency motion, are holding the line. The ACLU, already stretched across multiple lawsuits, has become the institutional firewall. But even the best lawyers can’t stop what the public doesn’t resist. This fight will not be won in courtrooms alone.
It will require public pressure, legislative action, and, above all, an unflinching commitment to the basic idea that rights belong to people, not just citizens. That the Constitution doesn’t expire at the border. And that dignity, identity, and due process are not privileges to be granted or revoked—they are the foundation of a free society.
If we allow that foundation to erode in the name of efficiency, ideology, or fear, we will lose far more than a legal battle. We will lose the Republic.
Let this moment be a warning. But also, let it be a call to action. The system isn’t working perfectly—but it’s not beyond saving. Not yet.
