Appeals court upholds temporary block on Alien Enemies Act deportations

A federal appeals panel has rejected the Trump administration’s efforts to overturn a lower court order that temporarily bars officials from deporting migrants under the Alien Enemies Act.

The Trump administration had asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to overturn Judge James E. Boasberg’s temporary restraining order, which blocked deportations under the wartime act while litigation over using it continued.

The government argued that the president had broad authority to deport alleged Venezuelan gang members, bypassing immigration court hearings. Justice Department lawyers argued that the president’s right to invoke the act was not subject to judicial review because the president has expansive power to make national security decisions. But legal experts questioned the justification for invoking the 1798 law, given that the United States is not at war with Venezuela.

Wednesday’s ruling could be appealed to the Supreme Court.

Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order on March 15 that barred the Trump administration from invoking the act for deportations. Boasberg also ordered the return of flights deporting migrants under the law. The Justice Department immediately appealed the case to the D.C. Circuit.

In a March 19 filing, the administration called Boasberg’s temporary restraining order a “extraordinary intrusion upon the President’s constitutional and statutory authority to protect the Nation from alien enemies.” The administration also argued that the order hurt the United States’ credibility with other countries and threatened “to jeopardize delicate foreign affairs negotiations with law enforcement partners.”

The legal challenges began earlier this month, when Trump secretly signed a proclamation invoking the 1798 law, after his administration designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization. The proclamation, signed March 14, claimed that the gang is “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”

The White House made the proclamation public on March 15, after the ACLU and Democracy Forward Foundation filed a preemptive lawsuit against the administration’s use of the wartime law to deport five Venezuelan migrants. That same day, Boasberg issued a temporary restraining order barring the removal of those migrants under the Alien Enemies Act. He expanded the order hours later.

In his review of the case, Boasberg requested that the Trump administration provide details about deportation flights that took place on March 15, the day the proclamation became public. The Trump administration has maintained that it complied with the temporary restraining order but has pushed back against the judge’s request for more information about the flights, accusing the district court of trying to “pry sensitive information” from the government.

A Washington Post review of flight records found that two flights took off for El Salvador while Boasberg was reviewing the case and a third flight took off minutes after the written order was issued. Trump officials said the migrants on the third flight were deported under a different legal authority.

Trump has publicly attacked Boasberg and called for his impeachment, a statement that drew a rare rebuke from Chief Justice John Roberts. Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) has introduced articles of impeachment against Boasberg.

The Alien Enemies Act allows for the detention and removal of citizens of a country with which the United States is at war. The law was last invoked during World War II to intern Japanese, Italian and German nationals and laid the foundation for the internment of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.