President Donald Trump on March 15 invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798—a law allowing for quick deportation of foreigners during times of war or invasion—and ordered the immediate arrest and removal from the United States of all Venezuelan nationals deemed to be members of the Tren de Aragua gang, who are now considered “alien enemies.”
In the proclamation, Trump asserts that many of the group’s members have unlawfully infiltrated the United States and are “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions” against the country.
Tren de Aragua “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States,” Trump said.
“I direct that all Alien Enemies described in section 1 of this proclamation are subject to immediate apprehension, detention, and removal, and further that they shall not be permitted residence in the United States,” states Trump’s proclamation, which also directs Attorney General Pam Bondi to communicate to members of the judicial branch that this is now the official policy of the United States.
Hours after Trump issued the proclamation, a federal judge temporarily blocked it. Chief Judge James Boasberg of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia provisionally certified a class of all noncitizens in U.S. custody affected by Trump’s proclamation and granted a temporary restraining order preventing their removal for at least 14 days.
“The Government is ENJOINED from removing members of such class (not otherwise subject to removal) pursuant to the Proclamation for 14 days or until further Order of the Court,” Boasberg wrote. The judge set a deadline of March 17 for the government to file a motion to vacate the temporary restraining order, with a hearing scheduled for March 21.
The ruling marks an early legal hurdle for Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, a rarely used law dating back to the John Adams administration, and sets the stage for further court battles over the administration’s deportation efforts.
The president’s decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to fast-track the deportation of Tren de Aragua members has already drawn a legal challenge from civil rights groups and a temporary block from a federal judge.
In halting the deportation of the five Venezuelan nationals for two weeks, the judge found that the plaintiffs met the threshold for preliminary relief, including a likelihood of success on the merits, and irreparable harm if deported.
The judge scheduled a March 17 hearing to determine if his temporary restraining order should be extended into a preliminary injunction, which could block the deportations indefinitely while the case is litigated.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment on the ruling. However, Trump declared an “invasion” at the southern border on day one back in office, a designation that could have major implications for the legal battle over the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport individuals quickly and with little due process.
The president further asserted that the “invasion” has caused “widespread chaos and suffering” in the United States and continues to pose a “present danger and imminent threat” to U.S. communities, ordering the military and Homeland Security to take immediate action to secure the border.
In contrast, the ACLU and Democracy Forward contend in their lawsuit that the United States is neither at war with Venezuela nor facing an invasion from a foreign country, and so the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport the five Venezuelan men—alleged members of Tren de Aragua—is illegitimate.
“The vagueness and breadth of the expected Proclamation, along with the government’s haphazard process for accusing individuals of affiliation with Tren de Aragua, will undoubtedly result in fear and uncertainty about the Proclamation’s scope, and will chill immigrants in their day-to-day activities and the exercise of their basic constitutional rights,” the ACLU and Democracy Forward wrote in their complaint.
They describe Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act as an “extraordinary and atextual invocation of a war power” that is unjustified as it comes outside of the context of an actual or imminent war, alleging that the move even threatens “the broader stability of the United States’ legal order.”
Since taking office, Trump has acted decisively on immigration enforcement, including ordering federal agencies to take immediate action to repel and remove illegal immigrants who cross the border.
The most recent use of the Alien Enemies Act was by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, following the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, to intern Japanese, German, and Italian Americans. The internment camps have since been widely condemned by civil rights organizations.
According to Joshua Treviño, chief transformation officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, two conditions must be met to invoke the act.
First, there must be a war, invasion, or predatory incursion into U.S. territory. Second, the act of aggression must be carried out by a foreign government.
Treviño said that if an organization—such as a cartel or foreign gang—can kill Americans on U.S. soil while operating with the support of a foreign state, it can be argued that they are effectively invading the country.
“They actually do have state support. In many cases, they are state agents,” Treviño told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview, in reference to Mexican cartels.
It’s unclear how the courts will ultimately view Trump’s invocation of war powers to deport Tren de Aragua gang members. However, the president wrote in his proclamation that Tren de Aragua is closely aligned with the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and supports Maduro’s “goal of destabilizing democratic nations in the Americas, including the United States.”
Over the years, Venezuela has ceded ever greater control to transnational criminal organizations including Tren de Aragua, Trump said, calling the country a “hybrid criminal state” that is now perpetrating an invasion of the United States.
Trump wrote in the proclamation that evidence “irrefutably demonstrates” that Tren de Aragua has invaded the United States and continues to do so, while also engaging in irregular warfare against the United States on behalf of the Maduro regime.
