A US judge on Thursday blocked President Donald Trump’s administration from using an 18th-century wartime law to deport some Venezuelan migrants, in the most sweeping ruling thus far against a key part of the Republican president’s aggressive immigration crackdown.
US District Judge Fernando Rodriguez in Brownsville, Texas, in a 36-page opinion, ruled that the Trump’s administration exceeded the scope of the Alien Enemies Act by using it to speed up the deportations of alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
The government labelled the gang a terrorist organization.
Trump’s mid-March proclamation invoking the 1798 law to justify rapid deportations had faced multiple court challenges.
Judges in several states are said to have temporarily blocked the administration from deporting migrants detained in their districts under the Alien Enemies Act, with a Colorado judge ruling last week that the administration must give migrants at least 21 days to challenge their potential removals in court.
The judge, Trump’s appointee during his first term in office, permanently blocked the administration from deporting Venezuelans detained in the Southern District of Texas under the law.
His verdict was also the first to outright reject Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, writing that Tren de Aragua’s actions in the US did not amount to an “invasion”; or “predatory incursion”; that would justify the use of the law.
“The President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,”; Rodriguez wrote.
His district includes the detention facility from which at least 137 Venezuelan men were deported to El Salvador on March 15, immediately after Trump invoked the law.
White House spokesman Kush Desai, in a statement, said Trump’s election victory had given him a mandate to deport terrorist illegal aliens.
“The Trump administration is committed to unapologetically using every lever of power endowed to the executive branch by the Constitution and Congress to deliver on this mandate, and we are confident that we will ultimately prevail,”; Desai said.
