By Luc Cohen and Ted Hesson
NEW YORK (Reuters) -President Donald Trump’s administration exceeded the scope of an 18th-century wartime law in using it to deport some Venezuelan migrants, a federal judge in Texas said on Thursday in barring the administration from using it to speed up deportations.
In a 36-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez ruled that the Trump administration could not rely on the Alien Enemies Act to detain and deport alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua because the gang’s presence in the United States was not an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” as contemplated by the law.
“The historical record renders clear that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms,” wrote Rodriguez, who was appointed by Trump during his first term.
Neither the Justice Department nor the White House immediately responded to requests for comment.
Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to speed up the deportations of alleged Tren de Aragua members in mid-March, part of the Republican president’s push to crack down on immigration. The law is best-known for being used to intern and deport people of Japanese, German and Italian descent during World War Two.
At least 137 Venezuelans were deported from the El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas, under the law on March 15. Relatives of many of the men and their lawyers deny they were Tren de Aragua members, and say the deportees were not given the chance to contest the administration’s allegations.
The U.S. Supreme Court on April 7 ruled that the Trump administration must give migrants the chance to contest any future Alien Enemies Act deportations in court.
Judges across the country have since issued temporary orders blocking such deportations in their districts.
Thursday’s preliminary injunction issued by Brownsville, Texas-based Rodriguez, whose district includes El Valle, is longer-lasting than the two-week temporary restraining orders that he and other judges in Colorado, Manhattan, and Pennsylvania had previously imposed.
(Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York and Ted Hesson in Washington, D.C.; Editing by Kirsten Donovan and Daniel Wallis)
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