U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. of the Southern District of Texas, a Trump appointee, ruled on May 1, 2025 that Trump illegally used the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 to deport people from the U.S., saying the Act is only to be used against members of a hostile foreign nation during times of declared war or during a military invasion.
On January 20, 2025, Trump declared a “national emergency” at the southern border of the U.S. by falsely stating an “invasion” was occurring at the border. He claimed this allowed him to invoke the AEA to round up and deport Venezuelans without due process. The AEA can only be invoked after Congress declares the country is at war with a foreign country or that a foreign country is “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”
Congress has not declared a war and no foreign country has invaded or carried out an incursion against U.S. territory, rendering Trump’s use of the AEA illegal.
Judge Rodriguez wrote,
“The President cannot summarily declare that a foreign nation or government has threatened or perpetrated an invasion or predatory incursion of the United States, followed by the identification of the alien enemies subject to detention or removal. … (“To be sure, a state of invasion under Article I, Section 10 does not exist just because a State official has uttered certain magic words.”) … Allowing the President to unilaterally define the conditions when he may invoke the AEA, and then summarily declare that those conditions exist, would remove all limitations to the Executive Branch’s authority under the AEA, and would strip the courts of their traditional role of interpreting Congressional statutes to determine whether a government official has exceeded the statute’s scope. The law does not support such a position.”
So far this year, Trump has deported 238 Venezuelan migrants to El Salvador, 137 of whom were illegally deported under the Alien Enemies Act. A CBS News investigation by 60 Minutes found about 75% of the people he deported had no criminal records. Without adequate evidence or any hearing, and often depending only on their tattoos, Trump claimed all of these people belonged to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua and had them wrongly sent to a maximum security prison in El Salvador where they have little hope of getting out.
In other news ..ICE is fining three Denver office cleaning businesses 8 million dollars for hiring illegal immigrants.
WHO THE HELL IS GONNA CLEAN THE TOILETS?
Also, it looks like Colorado taxpayers are going to be on the hook for the city of Denver’s largess, spending millions on the care and feeding of large numbers of people who sort of wandered across the border.
FAFO
🙂
I am glad that at least one judge has the sense of Democracy’s entity, ie rule of democratic society! I had a father that lived in Albania at the start of Worlds War 2, and so I know a bit about Tyrannical rule. hellish!
That Trump has an easy relations with Putin is frightening as hell.
Why does our Democracy not worry about Trump easy friendship with Putin?! Trump gets along with Putin because they are both Tyrannical heads of states, Countries!!!!!
But wait! there’s more…
“Rodriguez’s order clarifies that his permanent injunction does not prohibit administration officials from moving forward with removal proceedings under the Immigration and Nationality Act.”
In other words, due process. Which is what we have been demanding all along.