Trump-appointed judge blocks Alien Enemies Act deportations of alleged gangbangers in Texas

A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from using an 18th-century law to deport suspected Venezuelan gangbangers in South Texas, ruling that the president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act  is “unlawful.”In the most forceful ruling against the administration’s use of the 1798 law to date, District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, an appointee of President Trump, issued a permanent injunction against the application of the statute on migrants detained in the Southern District of Texas. The Trump administration’s utilization of the Alien Enemies Act to swiftly deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua – a vicious Venezuelan prison gang – to an El Salvador megaprison exceeded the scope of the wartime law, the judge ruled in a 36-page opinion. “The President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez wrote.The Brownsville-based judge ruled that Tren de Aragua’s activities in the US, which boomed under the Biden administration, fell short of amounting to an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” as Trump proclaimed in mid-March when he invoked the act. “Allowing the President to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA, and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the Executive Branch’s authority under the AEA, and would strip the courts of their traditional role of interpreting Congressional statutes to determine whether a government official has exceeded the statute’s scope.The law does not support such a position,” wrote Rodriguez. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act has been litigated in several courts, including the Supreme Court, but Rodriguez is the first judge to permanently block it on the merits. The White House slammed the ruling and said it believes Trump will “ultimately prevail” in his effort to rapidly deport Venezuelan gangbangers.

“The Southern...