Texas Judge Strikes Down Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans

U.S.|Texas Judge Strikes Down Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans

A federal judge on Thursday permanently barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans it has deemed to be criminals from the Southern District of Texas, saying that the White House’s use of the statute was illegal.

The decision by the judge, Fernando Rodriguez Jr., was the most expansive ruling yet by any of the numerous jurists who are currently hearing challenges to the White House’s efforts to employ the powerful but rarely invoked law as part of its wide-ranging deportation plans.

The 36-page ruling by Judge Rodriguez, who was appointed by President Trump, amounted to a philosophical rejection of the White House’s attempts to transpose the Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798 as the nascent United States was threatened by war with France, into the context of modern-day immigration policy.

The Supreme Court has already said that any Venezuelans the White House wants to expel under Mr. Trump’s proclamation invoking the act must be given a chance to challenge their removal. But Judge Rodriguez’s ruling went further, saying that the White House had improperly stretched the meaning of the law, which is supposed to be used only against members of a hostile foreign nation, in times of declared war or during a military invasion.

While Judge Rodriguez’s decision applied only to Venezuelan immigrants in the Southern District of Texas — which includes cities like Houston, Brownsville and Laredo — it could have an effect, if not a binding one, on some of the other cases involving the administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act.

“The court concludes that as a matter of law, the executive branch cannot rely on the A.E.A., based on the proclamation, to detain the named petitioners and the certified class, or to remove them from the country,” Judge Rodriguez wrote.