The Trump administration invoked a wartime law on Saturday to speed up the pace of deportations.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 gives the president broad authority to remove undocumented immigrants, but it’s only ever been invoked during actual wartime, and legal experts have said that President Trump will likely face pushback.
Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua, which is present in the U.S. and other countries, is the top target for deportation under the law, the White House said Saturday. President Donald Trump has already instructed his administration to designate the group as a foreign terrorist organization and wants to use the law to remove its members.
“I proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies,” the invocation on the White House site states.
The law is intended to be invoked when the country is at war or if a foreign nation has invaded the U.S. or has issued threats that they will. While the administration is pointing to threats from gangs and cartels, legal experts have noted that it would be challenging for the administration to use the law when the U.S. isn’t being actively attacked by a foreign government.
The Alien Enemies Act has been used three times throughout history, the Brennan Center states. It was used during World War I and World War II to detain and remove thousands of German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, and Japanese immigrants, as well as during the War of 1812 against Britain.
Under the law, the president can detain and deport natives and citizens of a combatant nation even without a hearing. It was meant to prevent espionage and sabotage during war, but it has also been used to target immigrants who haven’t broken any laws, haven’t shown indications of disloyalty, and whose status in the U.S. is legal, according to the Brennan Center, a non-partisan law and policy institute.
“It is an overbroad authority that may violate constitutional rights in wartime and is subject to abuse in peacetime,” the center states.
While the president may invoke the law during wartime, the Constitution hands Congress the power to declare war, meaning that the president must wait for Congress to act to invoke the Alien Enemies Act. However, “the president need not wait for Congress to invoke the law based on a threatened or ongoing invasion or predatory incursion,” according to the Brennan Center.
The Trump White House chose not to wait for Congress to act, invoking the law on Saturday.
While some anti-immigration politicians view the law as an authority to be used to deport unlawful immigrants, the Brennan Center argues that “invoking it in peacetime to bypass conventional immigration law would be a staggering abuse.”
Both Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman continued to use the legislation even after the end of fighting at the end of the world wars. While World War I ended in 1918, German and Austro-Hungarian immigrants were interned until 1920.
Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, the Truman administration used the law to intern and deport people until 1951.
Beatriz Lopez, the co-executive director of the Immigration Hub, said in a statement before the White House invocation that “Trump is unearthing one of America’s darkest laws to launch a deportation dragnet unlike anything in modern history.”
“The Alien Enemies Act will make it easier for ICE to identify, arrest and deport taxpaying, long-settled immigrants who have built lives, families, and businesses here,” she added. “Especially with access to personal data through the IRS, families across the country will be at risk of deportation even if they arrived in the U.S. lawfully.”
Katherine Yon Ebright, a counsel at the Brennan Center, said on X on Saturday that “Obviously this is an illegal invocation of a wartime authority for peacetime immigration enforcement.”
“The administration is invoking the Alien Enemies Act to effect summary deportations of Venezuelans who it *claims* are members of Tren de Aragua,” she added. “They are hoping that the wartime law will allow them to evade judicial review and get away with making baseless accusations.”
