The United States Supreme Court has crossed a line, and the silence surrounding it is deafening.

We’ll require due process going forward… but for those already deported? Sorry. No remedy.

In a cowardly unsigned 5–4 decision, the Court ruled that Venezuelan nationals facing deportation under an archaic wartime law must now be granted limited due process before removal, but only going forward. For the 250 human beings who were already secretly deported in the dead of night, under a legally untested proclamation of war with Venezuela, there is no remedy. No return flight. No review. No justice.

They are gone. Out of the country. Out of the system. And, in the eyes of the highest court in the land, out of sight and out of mind.

This decision allowed the Trump administration to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a centuries-old statute meant to deal with foreign enemies during declared wars, to detain and deport migrants based on alleged gang affiliation. There was no formal war. No congressional authorization. Just a proclamation, and then the planes were loaded. These deportees weren’t convicted of crimes. They weren’t given a day in court. They weren’t granted any of the rights supposedly protected under the Constitution. They were simply disappeared into the violent carceral system of El Salvador.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, in a scathing dissent, warned that this ruling is not just a legal misstep, it’s a moral failing. She likened it to Korematsu, the infamous 1944 decision that upheld Japanese-American internment.

"The president 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." — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

"This court now sees fit to intervene hastily, dashing off a four-paragraph per curiam opinion... We are just as wrong now as we've been in the past."

But as she noted, at least Korematsu left a record. At least that shameful moment in history was debated in full. This, by contrast, was done in the shadows, no oral arguments, no deliberation, no transparency. Just a rushed, three-page opinion from a majority unwilling to confront the human consequences of their actions.

The Court’s ruling means that going forward, those detained under this alleged war power must file individual habeas corpus petitions in the jurisdiction where they’re held, usually red states like Texas, carefully chosen by the Trump administration to ensure favorable outcomes. There will be no collective review, no class action relief. Thousands of separate cases will now be required, each depending on which lawyer you get, which judge hears your plea, and how sympathetic that judge is to a president wielding war powers like a sword.

But again, none of this applies to those already deported. Those 250 souls have no recourse, no court willing to hear them, no path home. They’ve been erased from the legal system and abandoned to whatever fate awaits them in foreign prisons.

This is the normalization of state-sponsored disappearance under the color of law.

It should chill every one of us who still believes that the Constitution was meant to protect the vulnerable from the powerful.