Immigration lawyers are reacting to the Supreme Court’s ruling, which declared that any legal challenges to the Trump administration’s plan to use a wartime statute to deport a group of Venezuelan migrants have to be filed where the men are being held.
And as they scrambled to adjust on Tuesday, their efforts could be guided by a similar case that is underway in Federal District Court in Brownsville, Texas. It was filed last month by Daniel Zacarias Matos, a Venezuelan migrant who claimed that the administration tried to deport him — without a hearing or an order of removal — under President Trump’s recent proclamation invoking the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act.
In mid-March, Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., who is handling the case, issued an order stopping Mr. Zacarias Matos from being deported until he could look deeper into the matter. His lawyers and lawyers for the Justice Department are expected to file dueling court papers this month laying out the details of what happened.
While the facts in Mr. Zacarias Matos’s case do not line up exactly with those in the cases of the Venezuelan migrants directly affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling, they could shed light on some of those proceedings as they start to move forward, most likely one by one.
According to court papers, Mr. Zacarias Matos came to the United States with his 8-year-old daughter in December 2023, seeking asylum from Venezuela. Federal immigration agents took him into custody in October at the El Paso County Jail after he was arrested on charges of violating the terms of his probation on two, now-dismissed misdemeanor charges, court papers show.
Early last month, the papers say, Mr. Zacarias Matos was sent to the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, where the administration was holding scores of Venezuelan migrants they were planning to deport to a prison in El Salvador under the expansive powers of the Alien Enemies Act.
Most of the Venezuelans had been accused of being members of a violent street gang, known as Tren de Aragua. But even though there is no public evidence that Mr. Zacarias Matos has faced similar accusations, he claims officials told him they were planning to deport him along with several other Venezuelans under Mr. Trump’s proclamation.
On the morning of March 14, immigration agents tried to put Mr. Zacarias Matos on a plane out of the country but were unable to, court papers say, “because it did not pass an inspection.”
That afternoon, Mr. Zacarias Matos was told he would be placed on another flight the next day. When he complained that he had not received an order of deportation, he was told that “he was going to be departing the country due to an order from the president,” according to the papers.
Moreover, the papers say, officials told him that if he did not sign a voluntary departure order, they would sign one for him.
The Supreme Court’s ruling focused on the narrow issue of where the lawsuit by the larger group of Venezuelan men was filed. The justices said that it could not be filed in Washington, where lawyers had initially brought it, but that it had to be filed — like the Zacarias Matos case — in Texas, where the men were being held.
In issuing their ruling, the justices did not weigh in on the deeper issue of whether Mr. Trump abided by several provisions of the Alien Enemies Act that were intended to limit how and when the law is used.
The act, which was passed in 1798, can be invoked only in times of declared war or during an invasion against members of a hostile foreign nation. Immigration lawyers have argued that there is no invasion or declared state of war, and that the Venezuelans should not be considered as connected to a hostile foreign government.
But on Monday, when the court filings in Mr. Zacarias Matos’s case start to be filed, they could explore the question of whether Mr. Trump has used the Alien Enemies Act in a lawful manner and whether the act should apply to someone like Mr. Zacarias Matos.
Judge Rodriguez has asked for three rounds of briefings to be filed by the end of the month and scheduled a hearing to discuss the case on May 5.
