Trump's use of wartime law for Venezuela deportations is unlawful, judge rules

By Luc Cohen and Ted Hesson

A U.S. judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump's administration from using an 18th-century wartime law to deport some Venezuelan migrants, in the most sweeping ruling thus far against a key part of the Republican president's aggressive immigration crackdown.

In a 36-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez in Brownsville, Texas, ruled that the Trump administration exceeded the scope of the Alien Enemies Act by using it to speed up the deportations of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. The government labels the gang a terrorist organization.

Trump's mid-March proclamation invoking the 1798 law to justify rapid deportations faces multiple court challenges. Judges in several states have temporarily blocked the administration from deporting migrants detained in their districts under the Alien Enemies Act, with a Colorado judge ruling last week that the administration must give migrants at least 21 days to challenge their potential removals in court.

Rodriguez's ruling went further. The judge, appointed by Trump during his first term in office, permanently barred the administration from deporting Venezuelans detained in the Southern District of Texas under the law.

His ruling was also the first to outright reject Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, writing that Tren de Aragua's actions in the U.S. did not amount to an "invasion" or "predatory incursion" that would justify the use of the law.

"The President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful," wrote Rodriguez, whose district includes the detention facility from which at least 137 Venezuelan men were deported to El Salvador on March 15, immediately after Trump invoked the law.

In a statement, White House spokesman Kush Desai said Trump's election victory had given him a mandate to "deport terrorist illegal aliens."

"The Trump administration is committed to unapologetically using every lever of power endowed to the executive branch by the Constitution and Congress to deliver on this mandate, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail," Desai said.

The administration could appeal Rodriguez's ruling to the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, considered by many to be the most conservative of the country's 12 appellate circuits.

The Alien Enemies Act is best-known for being used to intern and deport people of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War Two.

Lee Gelernt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing the Venezuelan migrants, said Congress did not intend for the law to be used in the manner in which Trump has deployed it.

“The court critically held that the president cannot simply declare that there’s been an invasion of the U.S. and then unilaterally invoke an 18th century wartime authority during peacetime,” Gelernt said.

Relatives of many of the Venezuelan men who were deported under the law last month and their lawyers deny they were Tren de Aragua members, and say the deportees were not given the chance to contest the administration's allegations.

Following those deportations, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 7 ruled that the Trump administration must give migrants the chance to contest any future Alien Enemies Act deportations in court.

The ACLU responded by filing challenges to deportations under the law in courts around the country where Venezuelan migrants were detained.

The civil liberties group also last week asked Washington-based U.S. District Judge James Boasberg to order the Trump administration to facilitate the return of the migrants already deported to El Salvador, where the U.S. is paying President Nayib Bukele's government $6 million to detain them at the Central American country's Terrorism Confinement Center.

Boasberg has not yet ruled.