A federal appeals court late Tuesday blocked President Trump from using an 18th-century wartime law to quickly deport a group of Venezuelans, rejecting the administration’s argument that the migrants were part of an “invasion” of the United States.
The Trump administration has said the migrants are members of Tren de Aragua, a violent gang with roots in Venezuela. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said in a 2-1 ruling on Tuesday that it did not find that the law, the Alien Enemies Act, applied to the migrants’ case. The court said that it found no “invasion or predatory incursion” by a foreign power.
The case appears set to return to the Supreme Court in what is shaping up to be a decisive battle over Mr. Trump’s ability to use the Alien Enemies Act.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer who argued the case for the American Civil Liberties Union, praised the court’s ruling.
“This is an enormous victory for the rule of law, making clear that the President cannot simply declare a military emergency and then invoke whatever powers he wants,” he said.
In April, the Supreme Court temporarily blocked the Trump administration from deporting the Venezuelan migrants while suits challenging Mr. Trump’s use of wartime powers proceeded through the lower courts, including the case ruled on by the Fifth Circuit on Tuesday. The Venezuelans, who had received notices of imminent removal and were loaded onto buses, were returned to a detention facility in Texas after the Supreme Court order.
In May, the Supreme Court maintained the freeze on deportations and sent the matter back to the Fifth Circuit. The court instructed the appellate judges to consider whether Mr. Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act was legal and what kind of warning should be given before someone is expelled under the law.
On Tuesday, the judges of the Fifth Circuit, considered one of the country’s most conservative appeals courts, said that their injunction applied only to the use of the Alien Enemies Act, and would not prevent the government from using other lawful means to remove foreign terrorists from the United States.
“A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States,” the court said. “There is no finding that this mass immigration was an armed, organized force or forces.”
Mr. Trump invoked the act in March, saying he was targeting Tren de Aragua, which had been designated as a terrorist organization in February. The next day, the A.C.L.U. filed a lawsuit in federal court seeking to block the president from using the law.
For months, courts across the country have struggled to answer the question of whether Mr. Trump is stretching the limits of the law by using the Alien Enemies Act.
That law had been invoked just three times before, all in times of war. It was enacted in 1798 as the young United States came to the brink of war with France, giving the president expansive powers to detain and expel members of a hostile foreign nation.
The Trump administration has claimed that the law empowers it to arrest and remove migrants with little or no due process despite court challenges seeking to stop the practice. The administration has already sent some Venezuelan migrants to the U.S. military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and to a high-security prison in El Salvador.
John Yoon is a Times reporter based in Seoul who covers breaking and trending news.
Francesca Regalado is a Times reporter covering breaking news.
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