A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that the Trump administration cannot speed the deportations of migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua using an 18th-century wartime law.
In a 2-1 ruling, the Fifth US Circuit Court of Appeals sided with immigrant rights lawyers and lower court judges who argued the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was not created to be used against gangs like Tren de Aragua.
“The Trump administration’s use of a wartime statute during peacetime to regulate immigration was rightly shut down by the court,” Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union, said. “This is a critically important decision reining in the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts.”
The Alien Enemies Act was previously used only three times in US history, and all came during declared wars in the War of 1812 and the two World Wars.
The Trump administration claimed that courts cannot second-guess the president’s determination that Tren de Aragua was connected to Venezuela’s government and represented a danger to the US, which it argued warranted using the law.
The administration deported alleged Tren de Aragua members to a mega-prison in El Salvador where, officials argued, US courts could not order their release.
More than 250 of the deported migrants returned to Venezuela under a deal announced in July.
In a 2-1 ruling, the court granted the preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs because they “found no invasion or predatory incursion” in this case. --->READ MORE HERE
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| El Salvador Press Presidency Office/Anadolu via Getty Images |
5th Circuit panel did not find an 'invasion or predatory incursion' to justify Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act
A federal appeals court blocked President Donald Trump late Tuesday from using the war-related Alien Enemies Act to quickly remove migrants from the country.
In a 2-1 decision, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit said it did not find an “invasion or predatory incursion” to justify Trump’s invoking the centuries-old national security law to target purported members of the international gang Tren de Aragua.
The court issued an injunction that prevents Trump from using the law to deporting migrants who filed the case and others who are in the same situation, but it pointed out that the administration could use “any other statutory authority for removing foreign terrorists.”
The 1798 law states that noncitizens age 14 and up can be removed as “alien enemies” whenever there is “a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion” is tried “by any foreign nation or government.”
Trump in a March declaration said among other reasons that Tren de Aragua was engaging in mass illegal immigration to the United States to further the Venezuelan government’s goal of destabilizing democratic countries, in part using drug trafficking as a weapon against U.S. citizens.
Judge Leslie Southwick, an appointee of George W. Bush, wrote the majority opinion that examined the reasons listed to invoke the law and concluded they “do not support that an invasion or a predatory incursion has occurred.” --->READ MORE HERE
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