A court ruling that blocked Donald Trump from invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport Venezuelans he alleged were part of a criminal gang has been hailed as “a victory for the rule of law”.
In a 2-1 decision on Tuesday, a three-judge panel of the fifth US circuit court of appeals issued a preliminary injunction that prevents the Trump administration using the 1798 law to justify rapid deportations.
Circuit judge Leslie Southwick, writing for the majority, rejected the administration’s assertion that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had engaged in a “predatory incursion” on US soil.
The Alien Enemies Act gives the government expansive powers to detain and deport citizens of hostile foreign nations, but only in times of war or during an “invasion or predatory incursion”.
Democrats welcomed the ruling by the fifth circuit, the first federal appeals court to rule directly on a 14 March presidential proclamation invoking the act.
Dick Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate judiciary committee, told the Guardian in a statement: “This president has repeatedly attempted to use wartime authorities like the Alien Enemies Act to threaten our fundamental constitutional rights.”
The fifth circuit was right to find that there is no invasion warranting use of the act, Durbin added. “This effort by the Trump administration has become deeply unpopular among Americans, and I will continue to fight back against it.”
Legal advocates agreed that the president had used a false premise to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, which has been only used three times before in US history, all during declared wars – in the war of 1812 and the two world wars.
Norman Eisen, the founder and executive chair of the Democracy Defenders Fund, which has been helping lead national court fights against the Trump administration, said: “This was a striking result from the extremely conservative fifth circuit, affirming what is obvious to any American who looks outside their window. There is no invasion by Venezuela or its gangs that authorises Trump’s declaration of such under the Alien Enemies Act.
“Indeed, that was also the view of more than 20 conservatives from every administration, from Nixon to Trump 1, who we at Democracy Defenders Fund represented in filing a brief explaining that this bogus declaration was a betrayal of conservative principles.”
The court agreed with the brief that there was no legal basis for Trump’s action, the latest indication that, even as other guardrails erode, the courts continue to act as a check on Trump’s expansion of presidential power. The Democracy Defenders Fund alone has more than 125 legal matters against the president.
“The most successful dimension of the resistance has been the hundreds of legal cases that have stopped Trump in his tracks,” Eisen observed. “The good news is that that is like a spark plug that is driving the other parts of the resistance.”
In his 14 March proclamation, Trump said he would use the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly detain and deport members of Tren de Aragua. The president asserted that the gang was a state-sponsored international terrorist organisation that has invaded US territory.
Almost immediately, federal immigration authorities deported 130 people that they alleged were members of Tren de Aragua to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
The supreme court ruled in April that challenges to removal under the law must be brought in the federal judicial districts where detainees are being held. Since then challenges to the president’s invocation of the act have been unfolding in courts across the country, and several judges have blocked deportations under the law within their judicial districts.
The case before the 5th circuit was brought by a group of alleged Tren de Aragua members being held at the Bluebonnet detention facility in Anson, Texas. The ACLU, or American Civil Liberties Union, which represents the men, has disputed the claims of gang membership.
ACLU lawyer Lee Gelernt, who represented the Venezuelans, said: “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.”
The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, the Cato Institute thinktank and others filed an amicus brief in the case, arguing that the law’s text and history show that the Alien Enemies Act was designed for wartime, not peacetime, and that the president exceeded the limits of his powers by invoking the law for deportations.
Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel in the Brennan Center’s liberty and national security program, said: “This opinion is a victory for the rule of law and our system of checks and balances.
“It affirms that baseless national security claims do not negate truth, common sense, and individual liberties: there is no ‘invasion’ or other act of war that justifies invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an outdated and dangerous statute that was last used for internment in World War II. The Trump administration should immediately rescind its invocation of the law.”
Latino advocacy groups also emphasised the need to stop Trump abusing the law to undermine civil liberties.
Maria Teresa Kumar, co-founder and president of Voto Latino, said the fifth circuit’s decision confirms that using “archaic wartime statutes” to target immigrant communities is both “unlawful and unjust”. She added: “Policies like these not only fail to address the realities of our modern immigration system but also erode due process and expand executive power without accountability.
“Importantly, courts across the country have consistently rejected this misuse of the law – with several judges already blocking deportations in their districts – demonstrating a strong and unified defense of constitutional rights. President Trump continues to stress-test our civil liberty laws that start with immigrants but will bleed into the rights of every American unless challenged in court at every turn.”
The Trump administration could ask the entire fifth circuit to rehear the case. It is expected to eventually reach the supreme court.
