Judge Blocks Trump From Deporting 5 Venezuelans In Anticipation Of Administration Invoking Wartime Law

A federal judge has preemptively barred the Trump administration from deporting five Venezuelan nationals, as the administration prepares to deploy a rarely used law meant to quickly remove foreigners during wartime or invasion.

U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued the urgent ruling Saturday morning, citing “exigent circumstances,” just hours after a lawsuit was filed on behalf of five Venezuelan men who say they have been cued up for deportation within hours or days as a result of Trump’s expected decision to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

Boasberg, the chief judge for the federal district court in Washington, D.C., also called for a hearing Saturday afternoon on the lawsuit’s effort to ensure anyone else targeted by Trump’s expected invocation is protected from immediate deportation.

The lawsuit, filed by Democracy Forward and the ACLU, emphasizes that the Alien Enemies Act has only been invoked during wartime — the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

The order by Boasberg was issued with unusual urgency, before the Trump administration had a chance to respond. The Trump administration almost immediately appealed the ruling.

Attorneys for the five Venezuelans say they expect Trump to justify the decision by declaring Tren de Aragua, a criminal organization overseas, to be akin to a foreign government subject to the 18th century law.

That invocation, they say, could subject “countless Venezuelans” to “imminent risk of deportation without any hearing or meaningful review.” The five men who filed the initial lawsuit say they were informed by immigration authorities to expect deportation as soon as Saturday night.

Boasberg’s Saturday order prevents any of the five plaintiffs from being deported for 14 days.

Trump repeatedly suggested during his campaign he may turn to the Alien Enemies Act to aid his mass deportation plans, a promise he reiterated on Inauguration Day.

The president said on Jan. 20 that he would use the wartime law to “direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities.”

He also moved last month to designate eight Latin American cartels, including Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations.

“We’ll be reading a lot of stories tomorrow about what we’ve done with them,” Trump said at the Justice Department on Friday, speaking about Tren De Aragua. “You’ll be very impressed, and you feel a lot safer, because they are a vicious group.”

A DHS official told POLITICO late Friday that the administration has been working on invoking the Alien Enemies Act but said it isn’t finalized and is “waiting to be deployed.”

Another person close to the administration, who like the DHS official was granted anonymity to discuss private conversations, said Trump administration officials have the authority on an “easily accessible shelf” and are waiting for the right case to demonstrate migrants are providing material support or assistance to one of those designated terrorist organizations or evidence of a person having hostility to the United States.

The centuries-old law allows the government to arrest, detain and deport undocumented migrants over the age of 14 who come from countries threatening an “invasion or predatory incursion” of the United States.

Those targeted under the wartime law would be swiftly deported and would not be allowed to have an asylum interview or an immigration court hearing. They would instead be detained and deported with little due process.

Since he took office, federal judges have issued a handful of rulings to slow or halt components of Trump’s immigration crackdown amid a blitz of lawsuits claiming aspects of those efforts ran afoul of the law or constitution. Judges have ordered the administration to lift a total freeze on refugee admissions and blocked enforcement actions at some places of worship.

Most notably, several federal courts have issued nationwide blocks on Trump’s effort to redefine the constitution’s birthright citizenship clause to exclude children of undocumented immigrants.

Ali Bianco contributed to this report.