A federal judge in the United States has ruled that President Donald Trump acted unlawfully in March by using the 18th-century Alien Enemies Act to expedite the deportation of Venezuelan migrants allegedly linked to criminal networks, marking the first major legal blow against the government in this matter.
Judge Fernando Rodriguez, appointed by Trump to a position in the Southern District of Texas, has concluded that the Administration “does not have the legal authority” to carry out detentions and expulsions like those in March under the Foreign Enemies Act, reports CNN.
In this sense, he has emphasized that the president cannot “unilaterally” invoke the aforementioned provision and declare on his own that the conditions set out in it are met, as he believes that the system of checks and balances may be called into question.
The expulsion of over 200 people to El Salvador last March has been the subject of multiple lawsuits and has even reached the Supreme Court, but Judge Rodriguez’s ruling represents the first sentence that thoroughly examines the case.
The Trump Administration has always defended its alleged right to enforce a controversial law originally conceived for times of war, arguing among other things that these are individuals linked to the Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization classified as terrorist.
So far, the law had only been invoked on three other occasions in the history of the United States, the most recent of which was during World War II to intern American civilians of Japanese descent in internment camps.