The Trump administration on Friday asked the US supreme court to intervene to allow the government to continue to deport immigrants using the obscure Alien Enemies Act.
The request came one day after a federal appeals court upheld a Washington DC federal judge’s temporary block on immigrant expulsions via a wartime act that allows the administration to bypass normal due process, for example by allowing people a court hearing before shipping them out of the US.
Friday’s emergency request claims that the federal court’s order temporarily blocking the removal of Venezuelans forces the US to “harbor individuals whom national-security officials have identified as members of a foreign terrorist organization bent upon grievously harming Americans”.
Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act has spurred a legal battle between the executive and judiciary branches of the US federal government.
As the executive branch continues to battle the constitutionally coequal judiciary branch for primacy, the US justice department said in its filing on Friday that the case presents the question of who decides how to conduct sensitive national security-related operations, the president or the judiciary.
“The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President,” the department wrote. “The republic cannot afford a different choice.“
On 15 March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime statute allowing the government to expel foreign nationals considered to be enemies to the US. When invoking the act, Trump, without proof, claimed that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua had “infiltrated” the US at the behest of the Venezuelan government.
A US intelligence document accessed by the New York Times contradicts Trump’s claim about the Venezuelan government’s ties to the gang.
That day, attorneys filed an emergency motion to block the use of the Alien Enemies Act to expel migrants to El Salvador. Then planes took off from the US, transporting the nearly 300 immigrants accused of being gang members. As the planes were in mid-air, a federal judge in Washington blocked the use of the Alien Enemies Act to expel the immigrants, but the Venezuelans were not returned to the US.
Despite the Trump administration in its supreme court filing claiming that it engaged in a “rigorous process” to identify members of the Venezuelan gang, news stories are increasingly placing those claims into question. Family members of many of the deported Venezuelan migrants deny the alleged gang ties. This month, the US district judge James Boasberg ordered the Trump administration to engage in “individualized hearings” for immigrants accused of being members of Tren de Aragua.
