Earlier this week, the Supreme Court said that people fighting deportation under the Alien Enemies Act needed to file a different type of lawsuit than they had and in different places than they had. Now, lawyers have done just that — and secured temporary relief in New York and Texas.

The latter case is notable not only because it’s being handled by a Trump-appointed judge — as the administration rails against jurists who rule against it — but also because the judge based his ruling partly on the government’s stance in another pending high-profile case.

“Furthermore, if the United States erroneously removed an individual to another country based on the [Alien Enemies Act] Proclamation, a substantial likelihood exists that the individual could not be returned to the United States,” U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez wrote Wednesday in explaining his temporary restraining order. The Texas judge cited the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, in which the government admits it wrongly sent him to El Salvador even as it is fighting against securing his return at the Supreme Court.

Rodriguez noted that the government in the Abrego Garcia case argued that the court lacked jurisdiction to make the executive branch return an erroneously removed person.

“The Court finds that maintaining the status quo is required to afford the parties the ability to develop a fuller record for the Court to consider the request for a preliminary injunction and other forms of relief … and to prevent the immediate and irreparable injury that may occur with the immediate removal of any Venezuelan alien subject to the Proclamation,” Rodriguez wrote.  

To be sure, this is only preliminary litigation stemming from Trump’s invocation of the rarely used 18th-century law that’s been previously invoked only during wartime. The Supreme Court on Monday didn’t decide the legality of Trump’s invocation but rather the particulars of how people are allowed to challenge their potential removal under the act.

But given that the administration has already sent people to El Salvador without due process — as Abrego Garcia’s case leaves open the question of whether wrongly removed people must be returned — these preliminary rulings can be vital.

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