Judge halts deportations Trump invokes ancient wartime law

US President Donald Trump wants to use the "Alien Enemies Act" of 1798 to take action against a Venezuelan criminal cartel. Shortly afterwards, however, a federal judge orders a temporary halt to this action.

Keystone-SDA

16.03.2025, 17:00

16.03.2025, 17:06

SDA

The law was last used to intern Germans and Japanese during the First and Second World Wars, and now US President Donald Trump wants to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to take action against a Venezuelan criminal cartel. At the weekend, Trump ordered the deportation of suspected members of the Venezuelan criminal cartel Tren de Aragua. However, a federal judge in the capital Washington ordered a temporary halt to this procedure shortly afterwards, as reported by the "New York Times" and the "Washington Post".

The Alien Enemies Act allows the president to bypass normal immigration court procedures in order to detain and deport foreigners who come from an "enemy nation". However, according to consistent media reports, this is only possible if the United States has declared war against a hostile state or if the President believes that the United States is under threat of "invasion or predatory attack". Trump invokes the latter in the order.

The president argues that Tren de Aragua is carrying out "hostile acts" and "irregular warfare" against US territory - and accuses it of following instructions from the government of Venezuela's authoritarian President Nicolás Maduro. The federal judge in Washington stated that he did not believe that the law provided a justification for the president's actions. He ordered the return of all airplanes used to deport Venezuelans under Trump's order. The government appealed.

"Hundreds of violent criminals" removed from the country

On Sunday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio then announced that the Trump administration had removed "hundreds of violent criminals" from the country and shared a video on the X platform that El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele had posted showing the arrival of 238 members of Tren de Aragua in the country. They were taken away under massive security precautions. It was unclear whether they were Venezuelans who had been deported under the Foreign Enemies Act.

The New York Times quoted a lawyer for the civil rights organization ACLU, which had filed a lawsuit against Trump's order, as saying that he believed two planes were already on their way on Saturday night. The civil rights organization argued that the criminal gang was not involved in an invasion.