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A federal appeals court panel ruled that President Donald Trump cannot use the the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up deportations of people his administration deemed to be members of a Venezuelan gang on Tuesday (September 2), the Associated Press reports.
The three-judge 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is among the most conservative federal appeals courts in the United States, sided with immigrant rights lawyers and lower court judges who argued that the 18th-century wartime law wasn't intended 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. 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," said Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Several other individuals designated by the Trump administration as Tren de Aragua members were already deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, prior to reaching a deal to allow more than 250 deported migrants to return to Venezuela. The Alien Enemies Act was previously used three times in U.S. history, during the War of 1812 and both World Wars.
Trump's administration unsuccessfully attempted to argue that courts couldn't second-guess his determination that Tren de Aragua was connected to Venezuela's government and posed a threat to the U.S. The judges ruled 2-1 in favor of the plaintiffs as they "found no invasion or predatory incursion" in the case.