A federal judge in Texas found on Thursday that President Donald Trump did not meet the necessary criteria to use the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Tren de Aragua members, dealing a blow to the administration as it attempts to remove criminal illegal immigrants from the country quickly.
Judge Fernando Rodriguez, a Trump appointee, said in an order that Trump could still deport Venezuelan migrants detained in southern Texas using other, more routine authorities. However, Rodriguez said the Alien Enemies Act, a powerful wartime law, was not an option.
“The historical record renders clear that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms,” Rodriguez said.
The Trump administration has argued that the courts lack the authority to weigh in on the president’s decision to use the Alien Enemies Act, but Rodriguez disagreed.
The judge said Trump did not provide evidence that Tren de Aragua was invading the United States at the behest of the Venezuelan government, which is a necessary condition to meet under the Alien Enemies Act.
“Allowing the President to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the Executive Branch’s authority under the AEA, and would strip the courts of their traditional role of interpreting Congressional statutes to determine whether a government official has exceeded the statute’s scope,” Rodriguez said.
The decision stemmed from a lawsuit brought by three Venezuelan nationals represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, who said they were wrongly accused by the U.S. government of being members of Tren de Aragua and that they were at risk of imminent deportation to a foreign prison under the statute.
The lawsuit is one of several that have cropped up across the country in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling last month that federal authorities must give “reasonable” notice to migrants ahead of deporting them under the Alien Enemies Act so that they have a chance to protest their deportations in court.
Art Arthur, resident fellow in law and policy at the Center for Immigration Studies, told the Washington Examiner that the ruling was surprising given the historic amount of deference courts have given administrations when an invasion or threat exists, dating back to at least World War II.
“Most American press outlets don’t really understand Tren de Aragua, or they put it in the same bucket as MS-13,” Arthur said, noting the ways the gang has taken strongholds in parts of countries such as Colombia, Chile, and Brazil.
Later, in a separate lawsuit in the Northern District of Texas over the same matter, the high court ordered the Trump administration in a 7-2 decision to halt its use of the wartime law for anyone detained in that district. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.
The Trump administration is likely to appeal Rodriguez’s decision, which would then send it up to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which Arthur said could be inclined to reverse the judge’s decision.
“They’ll take a more objective look at the case law and the limits of their own authority; they don’t want to be overturned by the Supreme Court either,” Arthur added.
Rodriguez also delivered another victory to the Venezuelan migrants. He agreed to class certification for all potential deportees in the Southern District of Texas, avoiding a situation in which each migrant would have to file their own petition to fight their removal.
Arthur and other legal experts have said it is highly unlikely that these plaintiffs could justify turning this case into a class action.
SUPREME COURT BLOCKS TRUMP FROM DEPORTING NATIONALS UNDER ALIEN ENEMIES ACT
“You can’t do class actions,” Arthur said. “Not everybody in that class is exactly the same … there should be individual cases.”
The Department of Justice could file an appeal to Rodriguez’s decision. A DOJ spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.
