A federal appeals court on Tuesday blocked the administration of President Donald Trump from using an 18th-century wartime law to remove alleged Venezuelan gang members from the United States.
A panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit voted 2-1 to block Trump’s deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, ruling the administration’s claim that members of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang are part of a warlike invasion is not true.
“Our analysis leads us to GRANT a preliminary injunction to prevent removal because we find no invasion or predatory incursion,” the panel’s majority wrote in its ruling.
American Civil Liberties Union immigrants’ rights lawyer Lee Gelernt, who represented plaintiffs before the Supreme Court and the Fifth Circuit, said in a statement Tuesday night that the ruling is just.
“The Trump administration’s attempt to use a wartime statute during peacetime to regulate immigration was rightly shut down by the court,” Gelernt said. “This is a tremendously important victory reigning in the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts.”
In February, the U.S. State Department designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization, and in March, the White House said the gang was “conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States” that include “mass illegal migration to the United States.”
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court halted the Trump administration’s plans to deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua being held in Texas to El Salvador, saying they were given insufficient notice — 24 hours — under the right to due process.
The administration since implemented seven days’ notice of removal for similar situations, which the Fifth Circuit said satisfied the time element needed for due process.
The Fifth Circuit limited its ruling to the use of the Alien Enemies Act for removal and said it does not cover other legal means of removing “foreign terrorists.”
Judge Leslie Southwick, an appointee of former Republican President George W. Bush, and Judge Irma Ramirez, an appointee of former Democratic President Joe Biden, voted in favor of the preliminary injunction that blocks use of the Alien Enemies Act.
Judge Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, voted against it and wrote a fiery dissent that argues Trump is subject to different guardrails than other presidents.
“His declaration of a predatory incursion is not conclusive,” Oldham said. “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.”
Didi Martinez contributed.
