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On Saturday, Donald Trump referred to the centuries -old law to detain and deport members of the Venezuelan gang, but his executive order was quickly blocked by a federal judge.
Trump's order quoted the Law on Extraterrestrial Laws of 1798 to remove the members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, which he said that “unlawfully infiltrated the United States and carried out irregular wars and undertook enemy actions against the United States”.
This policy relies on authority, which was last triggered in World War II for permanent citizens of Italian, German and Japanese descents outside the US-one of the most controversial episodes in American history.
James Boasberg, an American federal judge in the Columbia district, blocked the deportation of individuals in custody on Saturday, subject to the executive order for 14 days.
The law caused by Trump “does not provide the basis for the President's statement, given that the conditions of invasion, predatory invasion that actually relate to hostile acts committed by any nation and corresponded to the war,” Boasberg said, according to media reports.
The White House did not answer immediately to the request for comment.
The executive order was the latest escalation in the aggressive joining of Trump about immigration. The President promised mass deportation in implementing a measure of measures, including an effort to reduce the citizenship of birth and statement of the national emergency situation on the border of the American-Mexics.
While the order focuses on the members of the Tren de Aragua, it states that “the secretary of the inner security retains discretion to detain and remove any extraterrestrial enemy under any independent authority”. This means that it can expand the application of a law that critics claim that Turbofarm deportations could be in a proper process.
“The invocation of the Act on Extraterrestrial Hostility is a dangerous abuse of power to prepare people their legal rights,” said Allison Mcmanus, CEO for National Security and Foreign Policy in the Center for US Progress.
Last month, the government determined Tren de Aragua for a foreign terrorist organization after Trump ordered his cabinet on the first day of his second Presidency to assess a number of groups, including the Venezuelan gang for national security threats.
The executive order quoted Interpol Washington, who said “Tren de Aragua became a significant threat to the United States because it infiltrates migration flows from Venezuela”.
Trump's order said that the gang “continues to think of, trying to attack and threatens to attack the country” – the rhetoric that the president often uses in the description of immigration policy.
Legal scholars argued that referring to illegal immigration as a “invasion” could give Trump to the deportation of individuals in bulk or maintaining them without court proceedings under US law and constitution.
The executive order came hours after the US Civil Freedom Association filed a lawsuit on Saturday on behalf of five Venezuelan men in immigration custody, who were afraid of immediate removal if the alien hostile law was triggered.
This measure would eliminate citizens outside the US “without any opportunity for judicial review,” Acla said in court documents, adding that the status concerned was “the war measures that were used only three times in the history of our nation: the war 1812, the First World War and World War II.”
The government then appealed to the district of the District Court in the Columbia district, which challenged an earlier temporary restrictive order issued by Judge Boasberg.
“This court should stop this massive, unauthorized imposition on the authority of the executive to remove dangerous extraterrestrials who represent a threat to the US people,” the US Ministry of Justice said in court filing.
