Appeals court blocks Trump’s use of wartime law to deport Venezuelan gangbangers

A federal appeals court ruled late Tuesday that President Donald Trump cannot use an 18th-century wartime authority to deport Venezuelan gangbangers.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, agreeing with plaintiffs who sued the Trump administration, deemed that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was not intended to be used for Venezuelan gangs such as Tren de Aragua, according to court documents. The ruling, which marks a setback for the Trump administration’s deportation agenda, could prompt a Supreme Court showdown.

A majority opinion of the appeals court concluded that the president’s allegations against Tren de Aragua — a Venezuelan-based gang that has wreaked havoc within the United States — did not meet the historical levels of nationwide conflict that Congress intended when passing it into law.

“A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States,” wrote U.S. Circuit Judge Leslie Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, who was joined in the majority opinion by Irma Carrillo Ramirez, a Joe Biden appointee. “There is no finding that this mass immigration was an armed, organized force or forces.”

However, not everyone on the three-judge panel agreed. Andrew Oldham, a Trump appointee, argued that a president’s conduct on foreign affairs is typically an issue where courts give the executive branch a large degree of defense.

“The majority’s approach to this case is not only unprecedented — it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent,” Oldham said in a dissent.

Tren de Aragua began as a prison gang in 2013 in the Venezuelan state of Aragua, and has since ballooned to as many as 5,000 members internationally. The worldwide crime syndicate has a confirmed presence in at least 15 states, and possibly elsewhere in the U.S.

Roughly eight million Venezuelans have fled their home country under President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist autocratic leader who has overseen rampant inflation, economic turmoil, and political repression. Many of those Venezuelan nationals ended up making their way to the U.S., largely by illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Customs and Border Protection data show.

Shortly after returning to the White House, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to deport Tren de Aragua gangbangers, making them amenable to immediate arrest and removal. The president had also secured a deal with El Salvador, allowing for these deportees to be placed into the country’s infamous CECOT mega-prison.

The ruling Tuesday did give the Trump administration one minor victory, finding that the procedures federal authorities use to advise detainees under the wartime authority of their legal rights are appropriate, according to court documents. The appeals court ruling could be appealed further to the full 5th Circuit or all the way up to the Supreme Court.

“[The majority opinion] reflects a view of the Judicial power that is not only muscular — it is herculean,” Oldham continued in his dissenting opinion. “And it reflects a view of the Executive power that is not only diminutive — it is made subservient to the foreign-policy and public-safety hunches of every federal district judge in the country.”

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