Two federal judges have limited the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act—a wartime law that gives the president powers to imprison and remove noncitizens—to deport individuals in Texas and New York who sued after the Supreme Court removed similar orders from Washington.
U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, of the Southern District of Texas, said in an April 9 order that removing individuals under Trump’s March 15 proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act—in which he declared an invasion of the United States by the Venezuelan gang Tren De Aragua—would “cause immediate and irreparable injury to the removed individuals.”
