Judge blocks Trump's use of 1798 law to deport Venezuelan migrants

Flight carrying deported migrants lands in Venezuela

A flight carrying near 200 Venezuelan migrants arrived in the South American country in late February. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials transported them from Guantanamo Bay to Honduras for pickup by the Venezuelan government, which returned the migrants to Simón Bolívar International Airport, located in the capital city of Caracas.

A federal judge on Saturday barred the administration of President Donald Trump from deportations under an 18th century law that Trump invoked just hours earlier asserting the United States was being invaded by a Venezuelan gang and that he had new powers to remove its members from the country.

James E. Boasberg, chief judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, said he needed to issue his order immediately because the government was already flying migrants it claimed were newly deportable under Trump’s proclamation to El Salvador and Honduras to be incarcerated there. El Salvador already agreed this week to take up to 300 migrants that the Trump administration designated as gang members.

"I do not believe I can wait any longer and am required to act," Boasberg said during a Saturday evening hearing in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Democracy Forward. "A brief delay in their removal does not cause the government any harm," he added, noting they remain in government custody but ordering that any planes in the air be turned around.

Trump had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 Saturday to target members of a Venezuelan gang for mass deportations, just hours after a federal judge in Washington ruled that Trump couldn’t use the law as a means to deport five Venezuelans.

Trump claims the U.S. is being invaded by a Venezuelan gang – Tren de Aragua (TdA) – and the sweeping war time law will give the president broader leeway to deport what he says is a hostile force acting at the behest of Venezuela’s government.

What they're saying:

"I find and declare that TdA is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States," Trump wrote in the declaration. "TdA is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela."

US President Donald Trump speaks to the press before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base March 14, 2025, in Maryland. Trump is spending the weekend at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort, where he invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (Photo b

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Trump’s invocation of the law could allow for faster mass deportations of people in the country illegally – potentially pushing his promised crackdown on immigration into higher gear.

What is the Alien Enemies Act of 1798?

The backstory:

The Alien Enemies Act allows the president to detain, relocate or deport non-citizens from a country that is considered an enemy of the United States during wartime.

Congress passed the Alien Enemies Act as part of the four Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 when the U.S. was about to go to war with France.

The law requires a formal declaration of war before it can be used, but Trump appears to have invoked the law without such declaration. The sweeping authority of the Alien Enemies Act may sidestep a law that bans the military from civilian law enforcement.

Why did Trump invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798?

Dig deeper:

On Saturday, the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward filed an extraordinary lawsuit in federal court in Washington – before Trump invoked the law – contending the order would identify a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua, as a "predatory incursion" by a foreign government and seek to deport any Venezuelan in the country as a member of that gang, regardless of the facts.

James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the D.C. Circuit, agreed to implement a temporary restraining order preventing the deportation for 14 days under the act of the five Venezuelans who are already in immigration custody and believed they were being moved to be deported. Boasberg said his order was "to preserve the status quo." Boasberg scheduled a hearing for later in the afternoon to see if his order should be expanded to protect all Venezuelans in the United States.

President Trump weighs in on activist deportation

A pro-Palestine activist at the University of Columbia, who has been at the center of organizing protests in recent months, Mahmoud Khalil, is reportedly being deported, which sparked protests and unrest in New York this week after President Trump weighed in on social media.

Hours later, the Trump administration appealed the initial restraining order, contending that halting a presidential act before it has been announced would cripple the executive branch.

Trump had widely signaled he would invoke the 1798 Act.

The unusual flurry of litigation highlights the controversy around the Alien Enemies Act, which could give Trump vast power to deport people in the country illegally. It could let him bypass some protections of normal criminal and immigration law. But it will likely face immediate challenges along the lines of Saturday's litigation because it has previously only been used during wartime.

The other side:

"Last night, it appears the government was preparing to deport a number of Venezuelans they had no legal authority to deport," said Ahilan Arulanantham, an immigration lawyer in Los Angeles who filed two petitions to block deportations that night.