Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans
The case appears set to return to the Supreme Court in a decisive battle over President Trump’s use of the 18th-century law to deport migrants.
A federal appeals court late Tuesday rejected President Trump’s attempts to use an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants he has accused of belonging to a violent Venezuelan street gang.
The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, was the first time that federal appellate judges had weighed in on the substantive question of whether Mr. Trump had properly invoked the law, the Alien Enemies Act, as part of his aggressive deportation agenda. While the ruling by a divided three-judge panel of one of the most conservative courts in the country was a defeat for the administration, the issue was still likely to be heard by the Supreme Court.
Mr. Trump had made the Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798, the centerpiece of his earliest efforts to summarily deport a group of Venezuelan immigrants he claimed were members of the street gang Tren de Aragua. In March, he issued a presidential proclamation that drew on the law’s sweeping powers to round up and expel members of a hostile nation in times of declared war or during an invasion or predatory incursion.
But the appellate panel, in a 2-to-1 decision, rejected his assertions that the American homeland was in fact under invasion by Tren de Aragua, rebuffing the idea that immigration, even at a large scale, was synonymous with a military breach of U.S. borders.
“A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt or to otherwise harm the United States,” Judge Leslie H. Southwick wrote for the panel’s majority. “There is no finding that this mass immigration was an armed, organized force or forces.”
That finding could have legal and political implications given that Mr. Trump has used claims that immigrants are invading the United States not only to justify his use of extraordinary laws like the Alien Enemies Act but also to devise a broader anti-immigration narrative.
The Fifth Circuit’s ruling was the latest example of federal courts questioning the president’s basic version of reality and pushing back on his attempts to effectively manufacture crises as a way to grab more power.
Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority by claiming that a national economic emergency gave him the right to impose steep tariffs on several countries.
On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco rejected Mr. Trump’s assertions that a “rebellion” against immigration raids in Los Angeles warranted the use of the Marines and National Guard troops to suppress it.
“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” Judge Charles R. Breyer wrote. “Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”
The decision by the Fifth Circuit panel barred the Trump administration from using the act to deport a group of people accused of being members of Tren de Aragua being held in an immigration detention center in Northern Texas until further notice. It would also likely serve as a ban on expelling other Venezuelan immigrants being held in other detention centers across the country.
Moreover, the ruling kept in place a provision that requires officials to provide any immigrants who might be expelled under the law with a week’s advance warning before their removal.
It was hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has represented the Venezuelan immigrants.
“The Trump administration’s unprecedented use of a wartime statute during peacetime was properly rejected by the court,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. who argued the case in front of the appeals court. “This is an enormous victory for the rule of law, making clear that the president cannot simply declare a military emergency and then invoke whatever powers he wants.”
Judge Southwick, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, was joined in the majority by Judge Irma C. Ramirez, a Biden appointee. The third judge on the panel, Andrew S. Oldham, a Trump appointee, assailed his colleagues in a 131-page dissent for questioning the president’s authority.
“Today the majority holds that President Trump is just an ordinary civil litigant,” Judge Oldham wrote. “His declaration of a predatory incursion is not conclusive. Far from it. Rather, President Trump must plead sufficient facts — as if he were some run-of-the-mill plaintiff in a breach-of-contract case — to convince a federal judge that he is entitled to relief.”
The panel’s decision was somewhat surprising given that Judge Southwick and Judge Oldham had repeatedly interrupted Mr. Gelernt during oral arguments in June.
Judge Oldham in particular had suggested that presidents should be granted great deference when it comes to deciding questions of war or foreign policy. But the panel ultimately rejected the administration’s claims that even federal judges should not be able to question the president’s invocation of laws like the Alien Enemies Act.
The case in front of the Fifth Circuit followed a series of rulings from district court judges across the country, most of whom have also rejected Mr. Trump’s assertion that the United States was being invaded by members of Tren de Aragua.
In a small but Pyrrhic victory for the administration, the panel agreed it was possible that gang members were working in concert with the administration of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, and therefore could be thought of as agents of a hostile foreign government. But even that finding, the panel ruled, was not enough to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport the men.
The case resulting in the court’s decision emerged from an emergency petition the A.C.L.U. filed in April in Federal District Court in Abilene, Texas. It sought to stop the administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan men from an immigration detention center in nearby Anson.
After an all-day scramble, the petition ended up in front of the Supreme Court, which issued a narrow ruling saying that the Venezuelan men needed to be given ample time and opportunity to contest their removal under the Alien Enemies Act.
Ultimately, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit with instructions to consider two issues: the substantive question of whether Mr. Trump’s use of the act was legal in the first place and a narrower one about how much — and what sort of — warning immigrants should be given before being expelled under the law.
Now that the appeals court panel has answered those questions, the case could end up back at the Supreme Court.
John Yoon and Francesca Regalado contributed reporting.