President Trump on Saturday invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to order the swift detention and deportation of all Venezuelan migrants suspected of being members of the Tren de Aragua prison gang, treating them like wartime enemies of the U.S. government.
In his proclamation, the president argued the Venezuelan gang was “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States,” the legal threshold for invoking the 227-year-old war authority.
Mr. Trump’s extraordinary order is breathtaking in its scope and has little precedent in U.S. history. The law it cites, enacted only 22 years after the Declaration of Independence, references invasions and incursions staged by “any foreign nation or government.”
The president directed the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice to “apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove every” Venezuelan migrant, 14 or older, who is deemed to be part of Tren de Aragua and who lacks U.S. citizenship or permanent residency.
Those subject to the law would be eligible to be summarily arrested, detained and deported, without any of the due process protections outlined in U.S. immigration law, which include opportunities to see a judge and request asylum. Instead, they would be treated as enemy aliens and processed under America’s wartime laws.
The centuries-old statue has been invoked only a few times in American history, including during World War I and World War II, when U.S. officials cited it to surveil and detain foreigners from Italy, Germany and Japan.
But never before has the Aliens Enemies Act been invoked to target migrants from countries with which the U.S. is not actively at war or with the premise that a non-state actor is staging an invasion or incursion of the U.S.
Mr. Trump in his order argued Tren de Aragua is “closely aligned” with the repressive government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“(Tren de Aragua) has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens, undermining public safety, and supporting the Maduro regime’s goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States,” Mr. Trump said in his order.
Advocates led by the American Civil Liberties Union filed a federal lawsuit early on Saturday, before the White House published Mr. Trump’s directive, asking the district court in Washington, D.C, to halt the removal of five Venezuelan men in U.S. immigration custody in Texas and New York who the group said were at risk of being expelled under the Alien Enemies Act.
A federal judge quickly issued a temporary restraining order, prohibiting the Trump administration from deporting the group of Venezuelan migrants named in the lawsuit for at least 14 days. The Justice Department almost immediately appealed the judge’s order.
