WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court vacated temporary restraining orders issued by a federal judge in Washington that had blocked the summary removal of alleged Venezuelan gang members, giving the Trump administration the green light to use a wartime law to carry out deportations of migrants.

The majority 5-4 ruling Monday held that challenges to the detention and removal of migrants using the Alien Enemies Act must be brought as legal petitions in the area where the plaintiffs were held, not in Washington, D.C., where the American Civil Liberties Union filed its petition.

“The detainees are confined in Texas, so venue is improper in the District of Columbia,” the opinion reads.

The majority also found that migrants are entitled to due process of the law as part of their removal proceedings. The plaintiffs who brought the lawsuit in question said they had been wrongly accused of being members of the violent Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

“AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the act,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”

The high court opinion comes just as the judge who issued the temporary restraining order was mulling whether to hold Trump administration officials in contempt for violating his order to pause last month’s flights of Venezuelan migrants to a prison in El Salvador.

Judge James E. Boasberg originally imposed a 14-day temporary restraining order halting the deportations of alleged members of Tren de Aragua.

Despite that order, the Trump administration proceeded with carrying out its deportation flights to El Salvador, contending that the planes had departed before Boasberg’s order was finalized. At a hearing last week, Boasberg strongly suggested the government had purposefully rushed the planes out of the country before he could properly hear the ACLU’s case.

Even though the Supreme Court has moved to quash Boasberg’s order over the venue, legal experts believe the judge still retains the authority to hold officials accountable for any actions that may have contravened his directives before they were vacated.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said that all nine members of the Supreme Court agree that judicial review is available to migrants. “The only question is where that judicial review should occur,” Kavanuagh wrote.

Writing the dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor lamented the “suspect” legal conclusion of the majority that grants the government extraordinary power.

“It does so without mention of the grave harm plaintiffs will face if they are erroneously removed to El Salvador or regard for the government’s attempts to subvert the judicial process without this litigation,” she wrote.

The dissent was signed by liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, as well as conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett.

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