Trump blocked from using Alien Enemies Act for deportations
A federal judge blocked President Donald Trump from using a 227-year-old law designed to protect the United States during wartime to carry out mass deportations of Venezuelans.
Trump announced on Saturday that immigrants belonging to Venezuelan criminal gang Tren de Aragua are “engaging in irregular wars against the United States” and he will deport them under the 1798 Alien Enemy Act.
However, according to media reports, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered the cessation of deportation on Saturday night, an announcement that it will last for 14 days.
Judge Boasberg told the hearing that he heard that deported planes were taking off and ordered them to turn around, the Washington Post reported.
The law allows the United States to detain and evacuate people who threaten the country’s security during war without following due process. During World War II, the last invocation of Japanese descent was invoked.
Saturday’s announcement was not surprising, with Trump announcing Tren de Aragua “driving, attempting and threatening to invade or predatory invasion of U.S. territory.”
He had promised to use controversial laws for mass deportation during last year’s campaign.
The ACLU and other rights groups have sued, and he also blocked him from using it on Saturday before he issued the announcement.
According to the New York Times, the judge said at the hearing that the “invasion” and “predatory invasion” in the law are indeed related to hostile acts carried out by the enemy state, and that “the law may not provide a good foundation for Trump’s declaration.
An ACLU attorney told the New York Times that he believed there were two Venezuelan immigrants in the air on Sunday. The BBC has not verified the report.
The case will now pass a legal system and can extend all the way to the Supreme Court.
The announcement and the struggles around should rally Trump supporters, who sent him back to the White House to a large extent to combat illegal immigration and reduce the price of daily commodities. Since his inauguration in January, he has worked quickly to overhaul the U.S. immigration system.
Rights organizations and some legal experts say they have cited unprecedented citations, pointing out that the Alien Enemy Act has been used in the past after the United States officially announced a war against other countries. According to the Constitution, only Congress can declare war.
According to Trump’s order, all Venezuelan citizens at least 14 years old, Tren de Aragua and members who are “not actually naturalized or legal permanent residents” are “not actually naturalized or legal permanent residents.”
Trump did not list in his announcement how U.S. officials determine that a person is a member of a violent, transnational gang.
Katherine for Satry, a lawyer at the Brunn Justice Center, said in a statement that Trump did not prove that the detainee was part of Tren de Aragua, rather than an immigration law that had given him “full power” but rather to prove that the detainee was part of Tren de Aragua.
“He wanted to bypass any need to provide evidence or convince the judge to be actually a member of the gang before he was deported,” she said.
“The only reason for invoking this power is to try to achieve Venezuelan deportation and deportation based on their ancestry, rather than any gang activity that can be proven in immigration procedures.”
