A federal appeals court Wednesday upheld a restraining order temporarily blocking the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelan nationals under the Alien Enemies Act. The D.C. Circuit Court split 2-1 on the closely watched decision, with Reagan appointee Karen Henderson and Obama appointee Patricia Millett in the majority and Trump appointee Justin Walker in the minority. The case has pitted some of President Trump’s most sweeping assertions of executive power against the judicial branch’s own constitutional authority. At the trial court level, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg is grappling with the Trump administration over whether it violated his order blocking the deportations and should be held in contempt of court. But that ongoing aspect of the contentious case has not yet reached the appeals court. At issue on appeal was whether the courts have the power to review detentions and deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. Henderson, who didn’t ask any questions during Monday’s oral arguments but wrote for the majority, emphasized that the government does not have the power to sidestep judicial review as it resurrects the rarely used war powers under which it’s expelling foreign nationals without notice or hearing. “Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here,” Millett said during oral arguments. “These people weren’t given notice, they weren’t told where they were going.” Henderson colored her opinion with details of the barbarity of the Trump administration’s sudden removals. “While awaiting adjudication of his asylum claim, he was expelled to ‘El Salvador with no notice to counsel or family’ based on a misinterpretation of a soccer tattoo,” she wrote of one of the detainees. “To date, his family and counsel have ‘lost all contact’ and ‘have no information regarding his whereabouts or condition.’ The government concedes it ‘lack[s] a complete profile’ or even ‘specific information about each individual’ it has targeted for summary removal.” Millett, concurring with Henderson, hammered the lack of due process given to the men. “In the government’s view, based on its allegation alone, Plaintiffs can be removed immediately with no notice, no hearing, no opportunity — zero process — to show that they are not members of the gang, to contest their eligibility for removal under the law, or to invoke legal protections against being sent to a place where it appears likely they will be tortured and their lives endangered,” she wrote in her own opinion. Two flights of Venezuelan nationals have already been sent to a prison in El Salvador infamous for its human rights abuses and inmate deaths. In dissent, Walker largely pressed the same point he made during arguments: These cases should be brought as individual habeas petitions in the districts where the detainees are held. The cases are currently going forward as a class under the Administrative Procedure Act. Walker reiterated that at least for some of the detainees the proper jurisdiction is the southern district of Texas. The government would not say during oral arguments where all of the about 300 people detained under the Alien Enemies Act are being held. Millett rebutted his argument in her concurrence: “Worst of all, the government has confessed that its preference that Plaintiffs use habeas corpus to challenge their eligibility for AEA removal is a phantasm: The government’s position at oral argument was that, the moment the district court TROs are lifted, it can immediately resume removal flights without affording Plaintiffs notice of the grounds for their removal or any opportunity to call a lawyer, let alone to file a writ of habeas corpus or obtain any review of their legal challenges to removal.” Walker also took a whack at Judge Boasberg — a constant target of Trump’s ire in recent days — calling his orders “extraordinary” and lambasting him for ordering “aircraft to be turned around mid-flight in the middle of this sensitive ongoing national-security operation.” The case is one of Trump’s most significant power grabs yet as he seeks to unilaterally expel foreign nationals, including asylum seekers whose claims are still being adjudicated, without giving any legal recourse to those swept up by his Alien Enemies Act proclamation. Read the ruling here