(AFP) – US President Donald Trump invoked a little-known, centuries-old wartime power, the Alien Enemies Act, to send more than 200 alleged members of a Venezuelan gang to El Salvador over the weekend, where they have been imprisoned. AFP explores what the law is and how it has been used in the past.
– **220+ years old**
In 1798, in the early days of the United States, second US president John Adams passed the Alien Enemies Act as part of a larger package of laws called the Alien and Sedition Acts. The laws came into force with the United States on the brink of war with France and were meant to tighten requirements for citizenship, authorize the president to deport foreigners, and allow their imprisonment during wartime. While the other rules in the package were eventually repealed or expired, the Alien Enemies Act remained. The wartime law states that “subjects of the hostile nation or government” can be “apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.”
– **The World Wars**
While the law was enacted to prevent foreign espionage and sabotage in wartime, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, “it can be — and has been — wielded against immigrants who have done nothing wrong.” It has been invoked only three times — during the War of 1812 against British nationals, during World War I against nationals from enemy nations, and, most notoriously, during World War II for the internment of more than 100,000 Japanese citizens and Japanese Americans. The president can invoke the act if Congress has declared war. However, he can circumvent Congress if he is acting to repel an “invasion” or “predatory incursion.”
– **An invasion?**
Trump, who has promised an aggressive drive to deport thousands of undocumented migrants, says he is using the law against members of Venezuelan drug gang Tren de Aragua. In a proclamation published on Saturday, the White House declared that the transnational criminal organization is closely linked to the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. “The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States,” the presidential statement said. Trump maintained that the gang is “conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime.”
– **What do experts say?**
Experts doubt that the law allows for the mass expulsions of immigrants. Even if the courts accept Trump’s argument that Tren de Aragua’s presence constitutes an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” by a foreign nation or government, the United States “still bears the burden of persuading courts that individual detainees are members of Tren de Aragua,” judicial expert Steve Vladeck of Just Security said. “That’s going to require case-by-case judicial review,” Vladeck added, explaining that “the government is going to lose many of those cases.”
– **Judicial block**
A US federal judge granted a temporary suspension of the expulsions order — apparently as planes of Venezuelan immigrants were headed to El Salvador — raising questions over whether the Trump administration deliberately defied the court decision. The government has meanwhile appealed the decision and asked that it be suspended until the matter is resolved. A hearing on the case’s merits is scheduled for Friday, but the matter may well end up in the Supreme Court.
© 2024 AFP
