The Supreme Court is poised to deal Trump a major loss: legal expert

A legal analyst thinks President Donald Trump might not win his case at the U.S. Supreme Court, claiming he can deport anyone he wants without due process because the country is being invaded.

Speaking to MSNBC on Monday, legal experts Lisa Rubin and Slate's Mark Joseph Stern explained why the use of the Alien Enemies Act hasn't gone over well in court and why it is likely to falter at the high court.

"One of the things that they are saying, in particular, is that Tren de Aragua is a tool of Venezuela as a country, and that therefore all of the men that they are trying to take away from this country to El Salvador through the proclamation, are part of what they call an invasion by a foreign nation," Rubin said, speaking to host Katy Tur.

She noted that it isn't a legal theory that has worked so far. In fact, three circuit courts have ruled that illegal immigration and invasion are two very different things.

Stern went so far as to say that "this is the one case in which the Supreme Court has consistently ruled against the Trump administration."

He cited the recent case in which the court ruled that Trump denied due process to migrants when it shipped them off to a brutal prison in El Salvador.

"So, I think there is a real chance that a majority of the justices think this invocation of the Alien Enemies Act doesn't work, that it's unlawful, that we simply are not in a war. There is no predatory incursion or invasion," said Stern.

He added that this case "is one where I really do see some Supreme Court action against Trump."

Further, the courts have ruled against Trump's claim that they're members of gangs based on opinions about tattoos.

Those claims have been widely debunked here in the court of appeals," said Stern. "The government hasn't done any better, and its chief argument now is not just that Trump can do this because we're at war, but that the courts don't have any authority to review this action at all."

One judge on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has adopted that theory, stating that the courts have no business intervening in Trump's proclamation of war. So, if the Supreme Court agreed with that take, the argument over whether the men were legitimately gang members wouldn't matter at all.

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