Donald Trump summoned the wartime Chinese enemy laws of 1798 to deport five Venezuelan citizens from the United States.
In a presidential declaration issued on Saturday, the White House said: “Tren de Aragua (TDA) is a designated foreign terrorist organization with thousands of members, many of which have illegally penetrated the United States, carrying out hostile actions involving irregular wars against the United States.”
The call to wartime law comes hours after federal judges temporarily blocked the Trump administration using the 1798 law to carry out deportation of Venezuelans.
On Saturday, U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg in Washington, D.C. agreed to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent the deportation of Venezuelans for 14 days.
“Given the urgent situation that (the court) was recognized this morning, we decided that an immediate order would be guaranteed to maintain the status quo until a hearing is set,” Boasberg wrote in the order.
Boasberg’s decision comes in response to a lawsuit filed on the same day by the American Civil Liberties Union and the Advancement of Democracy. The organization accuses the Trump administration of illegally evoking alien enemy laws.
In the lawsuit, the ACLU and democratic forwards argue that the law has been called only three times in US history. The wars of World War I and World War II in 1812.
“Here we cannot use it here against Venezuela, a national of the country where the United States is not at war, has not invaded the United States, and has not launched a predatory invasion into the United States,” the lawsuit states.
“The government’s declaration allows agents to immediately place non-citizens on planes without reviewing any aspect of their decision that they are the enemy of the alien,” the lawsuit added.
A remote hearing is scheduled for today at 5pm before Boasburg. Both the ACLU and the democratic forwards are calling for the extension of temporary restraining orders to all those at risk of removal under the Act, the Civil Liberties Organization said.
The president had previously ordered his administration to designate the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang as a foreign terrorist organization.
Civil liberty organisations such as the ACLU “accelerate massive deportation and circumvent the limitations of this wartime authority and procedures and protections in immigration laws” as Trump characterizes gangs as foreign forces invading the United States.
The call is expected to face legal challenges almost immediately. The 227 law is primarily designed for use during wartime, with only Congress having the authority to declare war. However, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a nonpartisan authority on law and policy, the president has the discretion to invoke the law to defend “intimidation or ongoing aggression or predatory or predatory aggression.”
“The law should not be called because migration is not an invasion and we are not wartime,” said Juliana Macedo de Nascimento, deputy director of federal advocacy at the immigration rights group United We Dream. “It’s very scary to see us being labelled as terrorists and invaders as well.”
Alien enemy law subjects could be deported without court hearings or asylum interviews, and their cases are governed by wartime authority rather than immigration law.
Alien Enemy Act specifically allows the president to detain, transfer or expel immigrants based on their ancestor countries. And it covers not only the citizens of hostile countries, but also the “natives” who may include people who may have waived foreign citizenship and sought legal US residences.
Centuries of law were used during World War II to arrest over 31,000 people (mostly Japanese, German and Italian ancestors) as “an alien enemies” and played a role in the mass removal and imprisonment of Japanese Americans during the war.
Trump has built his lawsuit over the years to invoke the act by characterizing the influx of immigrants at the tropical border as “invasion.” He also directed the state secretary to plan by previewing the call in an executive order on the day of inauguration and preparing facilities “necessary to promote removal” of law subjects.
“By calling the alien enemy law of 1798, our government will use the full and immeasurable power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the existence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks, bringing catastrophic crimes to our soil, including cities and internal cities,” he said in his inaugural address.
While anti-immigrant politicians and groups have long advocated for the use of conduct in response to illegal border intersections, Macedo de Nascimento said many executive orders and congressional policies have already expanded federal authorities to detain and deport immigrants.
“We already have laws that allow mass detention. There are already laws like the Ryken Riley Act, which will expand the dragnet for those who may be detained,” Macedo de Nascimento said. “So the idea that he evokes the act of alien enemies feels kind of unnecessary. For me, it’s about building a story that really labels immigrants as terrorists.”
