The U.S. Immigration (ICE) Homeland Security Investigation (HSI) agent will take part in the detention of two previously convicted immigrants on January 26, 2025 at the Home Depot parking lot in Tucson, Arizona, USA.
Rebecca Noble | Reuters
A federal judge on Saturday banned deportation under 18th-century laws summoned by President Donald Trump hours ago, claiming that the United States was invaded by Venezuelan gangs and that he had new powers to remove its members from the country.
James E. Boasberg, the Supreme Judge of the District of Columbia’s U.S. District Court, said the order must be issued immediately as the government claims that already flying immigrants are newly deportable under the declaration to El Salvador and Honduras.
“I don’t think I can wait anymore and need to act,” he said in a lawsuit that the ACLU and democracy advanced at a hearing on Saturday evening. “A short delay in their removal will not cause any harm to the government,” Boasberg added.
The ruling comes hours after Trump allegedly claimed that Venezuelan gangster Tren de Aragua had invaded the United States and sparked the alien enemy laws of 1798.
“For many years, Venezuela’s national and local governments have been increasingly restrained against territory to cross-border criminal organizations, including the TDA,” Trump’s statement reads. “The consequence is a hybrid criminal nation committed invasions and predatory invasions of the United States, poses a great danger to the United States.”
This law was last used as part of the internment of Japanese-American civilians during World War II, and only two were used in American history during the First World War and the 1812 war.
The Tren de Aragua gang comes from a South American country’s prison and involves the departure of millions of Venezuelans. Trump and his allies were turned into faces of suspected threats posed by immigrants living in the United States last month, and were officially designated as “foreign terrorist organizations.”
Authorities in several countries have reported the arrest of members of Tren de Aragua, despite alleging that the Venezuelan government has eliminated the criminal organization.
Trump promised to use alien enemy laws during his presidential election, and immigrant groups endured it. It led to an extraordinary lawsuit on Saturday, and was filed before Trump’s declaration was made public. The lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy has suddenly moved to deportation in recent hours on behalf of five Venezuelans.
James E. Boasberg, the Supreme Court Justice of the DC Circuit, has agreed to implement a temporary restraining order to prevent a 14-day deportation based on the actions of five Venezuelans who are already in custody of immigrants and believe they are about to be deported. Boasberg said his order was “to maintain the status quo.” Boasberg scheduled a hearing in the late afternoon to see if his orders should be expanded to protect all Venezuelans in the United States.
Hours later, the Trump administration called for an initial restraining order, claiming that halting presidential actions before it was announced would crippling the administrative department.
If the order is granted, “the district court has a license to effectively prohibit emergency national security lawsuits from receiving a complaint,” the Justice Department wrote in its appeal.
The district court then said it could issue temporary restraining orders on actions such as drone strikes, sensitive intelligence reporting work, and terrorist capture and extradition. The department argued that the court “should stop that path.”
The unusual gusts of the lawsuit highlight a controversial act, which could give Trump a great empowerment to illegally deport people from within the country. It allows him to divert some protections of ordinary criminal and immigration laws in order to quickly deport those whom he claims his administration is a gang member.
The White House is preparing to move around about 300 people to detain El Salvador as gang members.
