A federal judge on Saturday ordered the Trump administration to halt the use of ambiguous wartime laws to deport Venezuelans without a hearing, saying planes that left the US with immigrants under the law must return.
On Saturday, the administration issued an executive order calling the law, the alien enemy law of 1798, to target US Venezuela gang members.
But shortly after the announcement, Washington, D.C. federal judge James E. Boasberg said he would issue a temporary order that would block the government from deporting immigrants under the law.
At a hurry-planned hearing, he said he did not believe the law provided a basis for the president's actions, and he ordered him to return to the United States under an executive order departing with Venezuelan immigrants.
“This is something that needs to be adhered to immediately,” he instructed the government.
Lee Gererund, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who sued the executive order, said in an interview after the hearing that he believed the two flights were “air.”
During the hearing, Judge Boasberg said he was ordering the government to turn the flights around, saying “the information is actively departing from the government.”
The government's representative lawyer is Drew Slight Sign, who told the judge that there is not much detail to share and that explains operational details will raise “national security issues.”
After the hearing, the government filed an appeal. In a statement later Saturday, Attorney General Pam Bondy said the judge placed “terrorists against American safety” and “put public and law enforcement at risk.”
“The Department of Justice is not obsessed with efforts to stop this invasion and make America safe again, working with the White House, the Department of Homeland Security and all of its partners,” she added.
The president's order on Friday declared that at least 14-year-old Venezuelan in the United States was part of the Tren de Aragua gang without approval.
Alien Enemy Law allows for the summaries of people from countries at war with the United States. The law best known for its role in the detention of Japanese-Americans during World War II was called three times into US history in 1812, during the wars of World War I and World War II, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, a law and policy organization.
Hours before the White House issued its declaration, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit on behalf of five Venezuelan men trying to stop the president from calling the law. All five men were accused of having ties to Tren de Aragua, but denied that they were in the gang, Gerrellund said. The lawsuit said one of the men had been arrested. Because the immigration officer “mistakes” believed he was a member of Tren de Aragua due to his tattoos.
Judge Boasberg issued a limited order on Saturday, which blocked the government from deporting five men.
The Trump administration immediately filed an appeal for the order, and the ACLU asked judges to expand the order to apply to all immigrants at risk of deportation under the alien enemy laws. At a hearing Saturday evening, Judge Boasberg said he would issue a broader order that applies to all “non-citizens of U.S. custody.”
In the lawsuit, lawyers for the American Civil Liberties Union wrote that they believe Venezuelans face immediate risks of deportation. “The government declaration allows agents to quickly place non-citizens on planes,” the lawsuit said, adding that the law “evidently applies only to war-like behavior” and that “here, the people, Venezuela) and the United States are not at war.”
The judge agreed, saying he believed that the terms “aggression” and “predatory invasion” in the law “really related to hostile conduct committed by the enemy state.”
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security, who run the country's immigration system and appointed in the lawsuit, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Noah Feldman, a Harvard University constitutional law professor, said the fate of a case that could ultimately get caught up in the Supreme Court depends on “how much respect the court will pay to the president's decision that there will be a threatened aggression.” The judge would have to make that decision “without many precedents,” Professor Feldman added.
President Trump, who campaigned last year on the promise to launch the biggest deportation operation in US history, often referred to the arrival of illicit immigrants as an “invasion.” One of the first executive orders issued after returning to the White House was entitled “Protecting Americans from invasion.”
His declaration, which evoked alien enemy law, appeared to have narrowly focused on Tren de Aragua, a gangster who emerged from Venezuelan prisons and grew into a criminal organization focused on sex trafficking, drug trafficking and human smuggling.
However, if the Trump administration's interpretation of law is ultimately upheld, it can be empowered to eliminate other immigrants over the age of 14 without court hearings. It would allow for an extraordinary move to arrest, detain and deport immigrant minors without the due process given to immigrants for decades.
Skye Perryman, president of Democracy Forward, Skye Perryman, the legal group that joined the ACLU in submitting challenges to the executive order, said Saturday “is a horrifying day in the country's history and made public that the president is trying to evoke extraordinary wartime power in the absence of war or invasion.”
Zoran Kanno Yongs and Glenn Thrush Reports of contributions.
