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It was an opening salvo in what is likely to be the decisive legal battle over the president’s attempts to employ the rarely used wartime law as a centerpiece of his aggressive deportation agenda.
May 31, 2025, 1:32 a.m. ET
The American Civil Liberties Union asked a federal appeals court early Saturday morning to stop President Trump from using a rarely invoked 18th-century law to deport scores of Venezuelans accused of being gang members to a prison in El Salvador.
The A.C.L.U.’s request to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit in New Orleans was an opening salvo in what is likely to be the decisive legal battle over Mr. Trump’s attempts to use the law, the Alien Enemies Act, as a centerpiece of his aggressive deportation agenda.
The case in front of the appeals court, which emerged from a lawsuit filed in Texas in April, is poised to become the first of its kind to receive a full hearing by the Supreme Court. The justices could get the case later this year and when they do, they will ultimately settle the question of whether Mr. Trump has used the wartime statute lawfully.
For more than three months, the A.C.L.U. has been rushing from court to court across the country, filing lawsuits in an effort to stop the Trump administration from deporting Venezuelans accused of being members of the street gang Tren de Aragua under the Alien Enemies Act.
The act, which was passed more than two centuries ago, gives the government expansive powers to round up and expel citizens of hostile foreign nations, but only at times when war has been declared or during an invasion. The administration has claimed that the presence of Tren de Aragua in United States is tantamount to an invasion and that its members have been acting at the behest of a hostile Venezuelan government.
But that position has been rejected by federal judges in New York, Texas, and Colorado, all of whom have issued separate orders declaring that Mr. Trump has been using the act unlawfully. Only one federal judge, in Pennsylvania, has upheld his proclamation invoking the law.
