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The image includes key figures: on the left is Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg from the District of Columbia, in the center is President Donald Trump speaking to reporters in the Oval Office on March 31, 2025, and on the right is U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis during her Senate nomination hearing on July 22, 2015.
President Donald Trump’s administration appears to believe the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 can be leveraged to combat illegal immigration and drug smuggling. However, federal courts have not been supportive of this application.
On March 15, President Donald Trump issued an executive order implying that the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, was responsible for “an invasion of and predatory incursion into” the United States.
The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times, during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II, when it was used to justify the mass internment of people of Japanese heritage while the U.S. was at war with Japan.
The United States is not at war with Venezuela. However, based on the government’s interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act, the Trump administration forcibly deported 238 alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process. Included with those summarily deported was Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a man with a work permit, married to an American citizen, and raising an American-born child. Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador in spite of a 2019 protection order prohibiting his deportation to El Salvador.
In late March, Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, writing that the law refers to hostile acts perpetrated by another nation. On appeal, 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with Boasberg.
In the neighboring jurisdiction of the District of Maryland, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis found that the government had no lawful authority to detain and deport Abrego Garcia. She ordered his return. The Justice Department in a Supreme Court filing stated that Abrego Garcia was removed to El Salvador through an “administrative error,” but the government had no authority to effectuate his return.
Just this week, the Supreme Court lifted Boasberg’s order that had barred the government from removing noncitizens who are designated as members of a Tren de Aragua. By a vote of 5-4, the justices declined to address the challengers’ contention that they are not covered by the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 on which Trump relied in issuing the order. Instead, the high court found, the challengers’ lawsuit must be brought in Texas, where they are being held, rather than in Boasberg’s Washington, D.C., court.
However, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote a brief concurring opinion that “the Court’s disagreement is not over whether the detainees receive judicial review of their transfers — all nine Members of the Court agree that judicial review is available. The only question,” he concluded “is where that judicial review should occur.”
As the Trump administration celebrated its “victory,” judges in Texas and New York said “not so fast.” Judges in both states temporarily barred the government from deporting Venezuelans jailed in parts of those two states while lawyers challenge the Trump administration’s use of Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The orders were the first to occur following the Supreme Court’s ruling that the administration can resume deportations under the act.
The broader decision was handed down by U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., appointed by Trump and sitting in the Southern District of Texas. He said that the administration cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to remove any Venezuelans being held at the El Valle Detention Center, in Raymondville, Texas, near the southern border, until at least April 23, giving lawyers for the detainees an opportunity to argue that the Alien Enemies Act is only applicable to enemy nations in times of war.
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The Trump administration received further bad news from the U.S. Supreme Court. In what appeared to be a unanimous decision, the high court affirmed on Thursday Xinis’ order requiring “the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador” and to be prepared to share what steps it has taken to bring Abrego Garcia home. She set a hearing for Friday, and — when DOJ lawyers asked for more time to evaluate the Supreme Court’s ruling — excoriated the government attorneys.
“[T]he Defendants’ act of sending Abrego Garcia to El Salvador was wholly illegal from the moment it happened, and Defendants have been on notice of the same,” Xinis wrote Friday in response to the government’s request. “Indeed, as the Supreme Court credits, ‘the United States acknowledges that Abrego Garcia was subject to a withholding order forbidding his removal to El Salvador, and that the removal to El Salvador was therefore illegal.’ Second, the Defendants’ suggestion that they need time to meaningfully review a four-page Order that reaffirms this basic principle blinks at reality.”
“That means they’ve done nothing,” Xinis said in retort.
The decisions in the deportations cases are coming fast and furious, and with each ruling, courts are beginning to assert their constitutional authority to hold in check an overreaching executive branch.
Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book “The Executioner’s Toll, 2010” was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
