Trump Invokes Wartime Powers to Deport Noncitizens with No Due Process

First they came for the Venezuelans....

The Trump 2.0 regime has taken a number of steps since January 20 to enable the government to detain and deport noncitizens without affording them any due process. On Saturday, March 15, the administration took a huge, though not unexpected, new step by invoking the Alien Enemies Act. This is the same law that the U.S. government used in the 1940s to justify interning thousands of Japanese Americans.

As

Kim Wehle

explains in Zeteo:

Donald Trump on Saturday invoked a wartime relic known as the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to speed up his terrifying mass deportation effort. You read that right: Trump plans to use a wartime authority from over two centuries ago to help carry out his dangerous anti-immigrant plan in a time of peace.

It is surely not a coincidence that Trump invoked the Act just hours after a federal district court blocked the administration from deporting five Venezuelan men currently in custody.

Supposedly Trump is invoking the Act in order to fight against a Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua (TdA) that he has designated a “foreign terrorist organization.” The claim is that Venezuela is now “a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.” This is the thin rationalization — calling immigration an “invasion” and an “incursion” — upon which to unleash wartime powers against Venezuelan migrants.

But he was also doing something more directly insidious. Shortly after the proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act was published, the five Venezuelans were reportedly put on airplanes headed to Central America (not, it should be noted, to Venezuela, since Venezuela refuses to accept deportees from the United States). The same judge then issued an order that any planes holding Venezuelan being deported pursuant to the Act be turned around and returned to the United States.

This specific situation will continue to play out in court, thanks to lawsuits filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Democracy Forward. But the language of the proclamation is quite broad. It provides that anyone the government determines is an “alien enemy” as defined in the proclamation shall be “subject to immediate apprehension, detention, and removal.”

Do you believe that application of the Alien Enemies Act will be limited to, as the proclamation specifies, “Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States”?

If so, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.

First they came for the immigrants….

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Links:

Presidential Proclamation: “Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua” (The White House, 3/15/25)

BREAKING: Trump Invokes 1798 Wartime Law that Paved the Way for Japanese Internment (Kim Wehle, Zeteo, 3/15/25)

Judge Orders Halt on Deportations of Venezuelans Under Wartime Law (NYT, 3/15/25)

Trump invokes Alien Enemies Act hours after court blocks some deportations (Chris Geidner, Law Dork, 3/15/25)