Sept. 3 (UPI) — President Donald Trump’s use of a 227-year-old wartime law to rapidly deport Venezuelan migrants is unlawful, a divided appeals court ruled Tuesday, finding there is no invasion of gang members from the Caribbean nation to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 Tuesday, issuing a temporary injunction against the Trump administration from using the AEA to deport Venezuelans accused of being members of Tren de Aragua.
“We determined TdA was engaged in either an invasion or a predatory incursion, the findings in the Proclamation that such actions were being directed at least in part by the foreign Maduro regime would satisfy the requirement that those actions be by a government or nation. We held instead that TdA was not the kind of organized force or engaged in the kind of actions necessary to constitute an invasion or predatory incursion,” the three-judge panel said in the ruling.
Trump, who campaigned on conducting mass deportations, often with the use of incendiary rhetoric and misinformation, invoked the AEA in March, which allows the federal government to rapidly deport foreign nationals in the event of an invasion.
In issuing the AEA, Trump claimed TdA was operating as a proxy for Venezuela’s dictator president, Nicolas Maduro, and was perpetrating “an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States” in order to fast-track deportations of Venezuelan migrants he accused of being members of the gang.
The move was swiftly met by legal challenges, and the Supreme Court in May blocked the administration from using the wartime act and sent the case to the Fifth Circuit court for consideration.
In its ruling Tuesday, the court added that the Trump administration has also failed to prove that those it is seeking to deport under the AEA are members of the TdA.
“The government’s argument, though, assumes the very things it must show in order to remove the named petitioners and putative class members under the proclamation, i.e., that they are members of the TdA,” they said. “The named petitioners and putative class members have yet had that question answered in court, and we therefore cannot rely on the government’s assertion that they are members of TdA for purposes of our analysis.”
Lee Gelernt, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who represents Venezuelan detainees who are fighting Trump’s attempt to deport them, said in a statement that the appeals court “correctly held that the administration’s unprecedented use of the Alien Enemies Act was unlawful because it violates Congress’ intent in passing the law.”
“This is a critical decision upholding the rule of law and reigning in the administration’s attempt to militarize immigration,” he said.
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