Trump Asserts Illegal Wartime Powers to Deport Immigrants in Defiance of the Court
The Trump administration has invoked, in peacetime, wartime powers last used to unjustly intern Japanese-Americans during World War II, to advance its deportation agenda. Worse, the administration invoked the law secretly to delay court challenges—and then ignored a judge who ordered the deportations stopped.
The Washington Post reports:
A federal judge barred President Donald Trump on Saturday from using a wartime powers act to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members without a hearing, ordering the administration to turn around any planes that had already taken off after the Alien Enemies Act quietly went into effect.
Trump signed a proclamation Friday to deploy the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 for the first time since World War II to swiftly remove Venezuelans allegedly involved in the transnational gang known as Tren de Aragua. The act has been used only three times before to bar citizens of hostile enemy governments from the United States, and only during a declared war. The White House kept the proclamation under wraps until after advocates for immigrants sued Saturday, fearing he was already sweeping immigrants out of the country.
U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, the chief judge in the District of Columbia, on Saturday quickly blocked officials from deporting Venezuelans under the act, saying in court that he did not know until that afternoon that Trump had invoked the measure. Boasberg’s order at first barred the removal of five men facing imminent deportation. It was expanded later in the day to anyone in custody who might be subject to the proclamation.
As he issued his ruling, the judge said he heard that “flights are actively departing” and ordered the Trump administration to immediately halt the removals and return to the United States any flights that were in the air.
In defiance of this order, the administration delivered the prisoners to Salvadoran strongman Nayib Bukele, who responded with a social media post saying “Oopsie,” which was reposted by Marco Rubio. The administration is defying the rule of law—and making a joke about it.
The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.
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