Immigration rights groups have launched a legal challenge to stop former President Donald Trump from deporting Venezuelans suspected of gang involvement by relying on a rarely used wartime law.
The Trump team turned to the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an old statute originally created for national security in wartime, to remove undocumented individuals — particularly those it links to criminal organizations like Tren de Aragua and MS-13.
The Supreme Court upheld the administration’s ability to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport undocumented Venezuelans accused of gang ties. However, the justices made clear that before any deportations proceed, those targeted must be granted a chance to legally contest the action under the provisions of the Act.
A spokesperson for Trump’s Justice Department emphasized, “The department has vigorously defended President Trump’s policies and will continue to do so whenever challenged in federal court by rogue judges who think they can control the President’s foreign policy and national security agenda. The Supreme Court’s recent decisions have validated the DOJ’s ongoing arguments to this end in court.”
Lee Gelernt of the American Civil Liberties Union pushed back, saying, “Contrary to the administration’s wishful characterization, the Supreme Court emphatically rejected the government’s position that they could whisk people away without giving them an opportunity to challenge their removal to a foreign prison.”
Gelernt continued, “The Court simply issued a technical ruling that the challenges should be by habeas corpus, but in no way remotely suggested the Trump administration would win these challenges.”
In response, the ACLU and allied groups have filed additional motions aiming to prevent the federal government from invoking the Alien Enemies Act at all.
Should that legal maneuver not succeed, the organizations point out that the Supreme Court’s decision still mandates that detainees be officially informed they’re being classified as “enemies” under the law — and be given the opportunity to fight that label in court. The Court did not address whether Trump’s use of the act was legally sound.
This could force immigration officials to present their rationale for designating certain individuals as gang-affiliated and eligible for expedited deportation. Until now, the administration has declined to provide names or evidence, though it claims some of those deported committed serious offenses.
According to one analyst from the Migration Policy Institute, the ruling ensures that due process protections must be extended to these individuals.
“ICE’s position so far has been, ‘We decide that these people are aliens, and we can just remove them. We get to decide who is an enemy and who is not,’ and that, I think, has been set aside by the Supreme Court. That’s the good part. The bad part is that, to use the due process that the Supreme Court said they’re entitled to, is now a much more tedious and difficult hurdle to cross,” said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the institute.
{Matzav.com}