Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a bespectacled, soft-spoken 56-year-old nominated by President Trump, turned his high-backed leather chair toward a government lawyer at the federal courthouse in Brownsville, Texas, and asked a question. Can the president define what counts as an invasion, then declare that an invasion is happening, and then use a 1798 war powers law to expel the so-called invaders?
“Yes,” answered Michael Velchik, a Justice Department lawyer.
Judge Rodriguez followed up: Wouldn’t that make Mr. Trump’s powers under the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, “effectively limitless?”
The question hinted at a groundbreaking ruling that Judge Rodriguez issued on Thursday when he found that Mr. Trump was wrong to claim that the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang in the United States, amounted to an “invasion” that justified invoking the wartime law.
The decision was the most sweeping ruling issued so far by a federal judge blocking the most aggressive prong of Mr. Trump’s effort, one that was already used to deport nearly 140 Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador on March 15. It comes after a Supreme Court decision in early April that Venezuelan detainees facing potential deportation under the Alien Enemies Act could file lawsuits in the district courts where they were being held.
The result of the court’s order has been that challenges to a key piece of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda, which began in Washington, are spreading around the country, filling the dockets of federal judges and drawing tough and skeptical questioning — even from jurists with impeccable conservative credentials.
Judge Rodriguez’s order came after five other judges hearing challenges of detainees related to the Alien Enemies Act issued temporary orders that blocked deportations for some or all of those held in their districts. In Colorado, a judge found that there cannot be an “invasion” without “military and wartime action” and that the administration had “improperly” relied on the words as a legal basis for deportations.
Texas, with its extensive network of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, is beginning to play an outsize role in the litigation. Judge Rodriguez is one of three Texas judges who have so far heard challenges from groups of Venezuelans. When one of his colleagues, Judge James Wesley Hendrix in the Northern District of Texas, declined to stop the imminent deportation of another group of Venezuelans held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, the Supreme Court stepped in and issued an emergency order blocking it.
In another case, Judge David Briones of the Western District of Texas ordered the immediate release of a Venezuelan couple, rejecting the government’s claims that they were members of Tren de Aragua.
The cases in Texas are also notable because federal courts there are reviewed by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the most aggressively conservative appellate court, which has issued a number of rulings supporting hard-line immigration policies.
The possibility of an appeal to the Fifth Circuit has driven the perception that Texas courtrooms might offer Mr. Trump the best chance to win rulings that would allow his administration’s plan to scale up mass deportations to move forward.
That makes the skepticism he is facing there especially notable, said Stephen Vladeck, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center. “The administration might have been overconfident in fighting so hard to have these cases heard in Texas,” he said. “There are some legal questions on which reasonable judges from across the ideological spectrum will disagree. But whether we are under invasion from — or otherwise at war with — Tren de Aragua just isn’t one of them.”
A spokesman for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
The origins of the case before Judge Rodriguez date to March 14 at the El Valle Detention Center, 50 miles north of Brownsville. From there, two buses carrying more than 200 men set off for the airport at Harlingen, and from there to El Salvador, despite an order from another judge in Washington, James E. Boasberg, requiring them to return.
Mr. Trump has trained his ire on Judge Boasberg, painting him as a radical liberal. The president might have hoped for a friendlier reception in front of Judge Rodriguez, where three of the men tried suing after the Supreme Court’s ruling.
Judge Rodriguez sits less than a mile from the Mexican border. Each weekday, one floor down from his courtroom, U.S. marshals bring forward a parade of border-crossers, some in orange prison smocks, some still in the street clothes they were arrested in hours before. On Thursday, they stood five and six at a time before a magistrate judge who took sips from a Whataburger cup as some men stood for their arraignments and others waived their right to a jury trial and pleaded guilty.
Still, Judge Rodriguez has not immediately embraced the drastic measures the administration is taking to reboot the immigration system, a sign that Mr. Trump’s claims about the extent of his own power may be too bold for some of his judicial nominees.
Two weeks before the hearing, Judge Rodriguez had issued a temporary restraining order that barred the government from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport the three plaintiffs, or any other El Valle detainee.
The break with Mr. Trump was surprising, said Jodi Goodwin, an immigration lawyer in Brownsville who often appears before the judge. Of Brownsville’s two federal judges, Ms. Goodwin said Judge Rodriguez was known as “the more conservative, more strict judge.”
Judge Rodriguez, who declined to comment for this article, was the first Latino chosen by Mr. Trump for the federal bench. During his confirmation hearing in 2017, the judge talked about being raised by a single mother and living near the poverty line. He went to Yale, the first in his family to attend a four-year college, then the University of Texas Law School, and went on to make partner at Baker Botts, a powerful Houston firm. For eight years, he worked overseas for the International Justice Mission, an evangelical Christian group that fights human trafficking. “All these experiences,” he told the Senate, “enable me to empathize with the vulnerable, the poor and the disadvantaged.”
At the immigration hearing, Judge Rodriguez took a careful, inquisitive approach as he scrutinized the claims about the word “invasion,” a crucial term from both the statute and Mr. Trump’s proclamation on March 14 invoking the war powers law. The judge said he was searching for “the plain, ordinary meaning” of the word as it was understood in 1798.
Mr. Velchik said “invasion” and “predatory incursion” could be applied to nonstate actors like “Indian tribes” and “Barbary pirates.” But when Judge Rodriguez asked him to back it up with “sources from that time,” Mr. Velchik came up empty. The attempt to discern the law’s original meaning, a staple of conservative jurisprudence that has been used to protect the rights of gun owners and restrict access to abortion, now seemed to be working against the administration’s agenda.
Elsewhere in Brownsville, there were broader questions about whether Mr. Trump’s approach to immigration was consistent with local tradition. In February, Immigration and Customs Enforcement raided Abby’s Bakery, a pastry shop 16 miles from Brownsville. They discovered workers who were living on the owners’ property. Two were undocumented, according to a complaint filed in court; six had visas to visit the United States but not to work. The two owners were charged with harboring aliens, a crime with a penalty of up to 10 years in prison. They have pleaded not guilty, and their trial, also before Judge Rodriguez, is scheduled for July.
Jaime M. Diez, the lawyer representing the bakery owners, said the case had made ranchers reluctant to board seasonal migrants who work as ranch hands, a practice in the region for generations. “Everyone is scared,” he said. “They’ve been arresting people left and right.”
Toward the end of the hearing, Judge Rodriguez examined whether a government plan to give detainees as little as 12 hours to challenge their detentions complied with an order from the Supreme Court that they be allowed “reasonable time” to sue. He asked how detainees could challenge it. If they were somehow able to file quickly, they would not have suffered any injury, he said. But if they were not able to file, then the government could fly them off to El Salvador, beyond the reach of U.S. courts.
“From my perspective, there’s a Catch-22,” the judge said.
Ms. Goodwin, the immigration lawyer, said 12 hours was insufficient, given the demands on lawyers’ time since Mr. Trump took office. “My clients are petrified,” she said. “‘Are they going to come to my house? Are they going to come to the schools? Can I go to the doctor? You’re the lawyer. Can’t you do something?’ I spend so much time just trying to calm fears.”
Muneer Ahmad, a professor at Yale Law School who represents immigrants as part of the school’s Worker and Immigrant Rights Advocacy Clinic, called Judge Rodriguez’s ruling “well-reasoned” and “significant.”
“For a Trump-appointed judge to so unambiguously rule that the invocation of the statute was unlawful,” he said, “I hope will hasten the end of this legal charade.”
Alan Feuer contributed reporting, and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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