AILA: Invocation of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans to El Salvador is Unconstitutional

Over the weekend, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA), an archaic, draconian law as the rationale for deporting hundreds of Venezuelan nationals that he claims, without being required to prove, are members of a Venezuelan gang, the Tren de Aragua. According to reports, they will be jailed for a year in a notoriously violent and overcrowded prison in El Salvador. AILA leadership responded with the following:

AILA President Kelli Stump stated, “This is an extraordinary overreach of the President’s authority. He is arguing that suspected members of a gang constitute an invading force to justify using the Alien Enemies Act, which requires a foreign government to attempt an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ of U.S. territory. Americans aren’t asking for this type of executive authoritarianism. The last time this Act was invoked, it was weaponized to unlawfully incarcerate thousands of noncitizens and paved the way for tens of thousands of Japanese American U.S. citizens to be held in internment camps during a shameful period of our nation’s history. We can enforce the law and protect our communities without abandoning our values and risk repeating the cruel history of what we did to Japanese Americans during WWII.”

AILA Executive Director Ben Johnson stated, “We have laws in place that allow us to deport dangerous people who have violated our laws and pose a threat to our safety. No President should be able to resurrect a law from the 1700’s and circumvent our constitutionally and statutorily mandated due process protections. Allowing President Trump to be the judge, jury, and executioner and send people to an inhumane prison in El Salvador without any care to ensure that they are in fact gang members is unnecessary and un-American. If he is allowed to use this power in this way—which flies in the face of any reasonable interpretation that our country is at war or being invaded—I fear deeply for the future and the safety and security of all of us.”

For more information, please see AILA’s new Policy Brief: the Alien Enemies Act.