‘Critically important’: 2 appeals judges decide to second-guess Trump’s ‘foreign affairs and national security’ priorities
Claim the Enemy Aliens Act not available for deporting invading criminal gang members
Two federal appeals court judges have decided to second-guess President Donald Trump’s “foreign affairs and national security” decisions, ruling that the Alien Enemies Act is not available for him to use to deport members of an invading criminal gang.
The decision came from Leslie Southwick and Irma Carrillo Ramirez, of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
There already is a division among federal courts on the issue, as a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that Trump is allowed to use the AEA to deport members of the Venezuelan force, Tren de Aragua, whose troops already have invaded America with their drugs and human trafficking, and even, in leftist Colorado, the armed and organized forces simply took over apartment buildings and demanded residents pay rent to them.
A report at Fox News said Southwick and Ramirez wrote in the majority opinion of the 2-1 decision that Venezuela sending “its residents and citizens” to enter the U.S. “illegally,” “is not the modern-day equivalent” of sending an army.
“A country 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.”
U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham argued in dissent that the majority was second-guessing Trump’s conduct in foreign affairs and national security, and those are topics on which courts should give the president great deference.
“The majority’s approach to this case is not only unprecedented—it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent,” Oldham wrote.
The case already had been to the Supreme Court, which in an unsigned order said the Trump DOJ didn’t give members of the Venezuelan criminal force enough time to challenge their deportations, and it sent the case back down to the 5th Circuit.
The Supreme Court had said, “Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster.”
The law has been used before to repel members of invading organizations, but only during wartime, the report said.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the pro-illegal alien American Civil Liberties Union, said, “This is a critically important decision reining in the administration’s view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts.”
The Trump administration had argued that the courts cannot second-guess the president’s decisions on foreign policy and international affairs, specifically his determination that Tren de Aragua was connected to Venezuela’s government and represented a danger to the U.S., which warrants using the law.
The appeals court claimed that the organized crime operations by Tren de Aragua in the United States represented “no invasion or predatory incursion.”
The fight is expected to be presented to the full 5th Circuit, and possibly then the Supreme Court again.
