A federal appeals court late Tuesday ruled against a Trump administration scheme that cited an 18th-century wartime statute to justify its clandestine deportation of alleged gang members to El Salvador, where they were imprisoned under harsh conditions without accountability and limited legal recourse.
The 3-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals—among the most conservative of the US appellate courts and more likely to side with Trump—said lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security did not present a satisfying case arguing that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows for the arrest and deportation of "enemies" by presidential authority during wartime or an active invasion, could be used to target alleged low-level gang members, in this case those of Tren de Aragua or TdA, which has roots in Venezuela.
Trump and his team had argued the gang members were being directed by the Venezuelan government of President Nicolas Maduro, but have presented no evidence to support such claims. And while the group is known for some levels of violence and illegal drug trafficking, civil rights groups—led by ACLU—challenged the deportation of alleged members as a clear violation of domestic immigration law and principles of due process.
Critics of Trump also said it was laughable to treat a criminal gang like TdA as equivalent to an invading army. They warned that Trump's overreach was only part of his broader authoritarian push to claim wider and more dangerous power to target, intimidate, and harm immigrant communities.
"TdA was not the kind of organized force or engaged in the kind of actions necessary to constitute an invasion or predatory incursion," wrote Judge Leslie Southwick in the panel's 2-1 majority decision.
The court granted the preliminary injunction sought by the plaintiffs, barring further deportations from Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi—where alleged TdA members are currently being held—until the case, almost certainly destined for the US Supreme Court, is finally decided.
Lee Gelernt, who argued the case for the ACLU, said the Trump administration's "use of a wartime statute during peacetime to regulate immigration was rightly shut down by the court."
The ruling, Gelernt added, was "a critically important decision reining in the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts."
Republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).
