After the 1812 war, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed Trump to use the Alien Enemy Act, but was restricted; what does this mean
In an unsigned 5-4 ruling backed by a Conservative judge, the court approved the administration’s March 15 order from Washington-based U.S. Justice James Boasberg, which temporarily prevented Trump from citing the Alien Enemy Act lawsuit.
But the top U.S. courts also said migrants deported under the Foreign Enemy Act had to “have a chance to challenge their dismissal.”
Previously, U.S. President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the first time since World War II, granting himself the removal of people associated with Venezuelan gangs under hundreds of years of history.
What is “Alien Enemy Law”?
In 1798, with the United States preparing, Congress passed a series of laws to increase the influence of the federal government. Fearing that immigration could sympathize with the French, the Foreign Enemy Act was created to give the president the authority to imprison and expel non-citizens during wartime.
Since then, the bill has been used only 3 times: during the 1812 War, World War I and World War II.
During World War II, due to anti-foreigners’ fears of the country, it was part of the legal principles of mass detention in the United States, namely Germans, Italians, and especially Japanese descent. During the war, an estimated 1.2 million people who owned Japanese heritage, including those of U.S. citizenship, were imprisoned during the war.
The United States is not in the war, is it?
For years, Trump and his allies believed that the United States was facing “invasion” by people who arrived illegally. Under President Joe Biden, arrests on the U.S.-Mexico border exceeded 2 million (2 million) for two consecutive years, many of whom released the U.S. seeking asylum. After hitting an all-time high of 2.5 million per month in December 2023, they fell to less than 8,400 in February, the lowest level since the 1960s.
In his inaugural address, Trump said the bill would be a key tool for his immigration repression.
“By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate all foreign gangs and criminal networks, thereby bringing devastating crime to the American soil,” he said. “As Commander-in-Chief, I have no responsibility to defend the nation from threats and invasions.”
Critics say Trump mistakenly used the law to target non-state actors, not foreign governments.
The Brennan Justice Center wrote: “Invoking it around traditional immigration laws in peacetime would be a surprising abuse.
“The law-provided conflict of detention and deportation is related to contemporary understanding of equal protection and due process,” the Brennan Center said.
Does illegal immigration constitute invasion?
This is a new untested argument. Trump warned that the power of the U.S. Latin American criminal gang, but only a small number of people living in the U.S. are criminals.
In Saturday’s wartime manifesto, Trump said Tren de Aragua was “driving, attempting and threatening an invasion of the invasion of U.S. territory.” He said the gang had engaged in an “irregular war” against the United States under the guidance of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Tren de Aragua originated in the infamous prisons of the infamous state of Aragua and was accompanied by the Exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the vast majority of whom had undone the state’s economic conditions over the last decade and were seeking better living conditions.
Last month, the Trump administration designated Tren de Aragua and seven other Latin American criminal organizations as “foreign terrorist organizations,” putting pressure on cartels operating in the United States and anyone who assisted them.
In a report last month, the Congressional Research Department said officials could use foreign terrorist designations to argue that the gang’s activities in the United States were equal to a limited invasion. “This theory seems unprecedented and has not yet been under judicial scrutiny,” the Congressional Research Bureau said.
The Venezuelan government has not usually brought its people back from the United States except for a few times. About 350 people have been deported to Venezuela over the past few weeks, with about 180 of them spending up to 16 days at the U.S. Naval Base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
