Federal Judge Strikes Down Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans

A federal judge on Thursday permanently barred the Trump administration from invoking the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law, to deport Venezuelans it has deemed to be criminals from the Southern District of Texas, saying that the White House’s use of the statute was illegal.

The decision by the judge, Fernando Rodriguez Jr., was the most expansive ruling yet by any of the numerous jurists who are currently hearing challenges to the White House’s efforts to employ the powerful but rarely invoked law as part of its wide-ranging deportation plans.

The 36-page ruling by Judge Rodriguez, a President Trump appointee, amounted to a philosophical rejection of the White House’s attempts to transpose the Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798 as the nascent United States was threatened by war with France, into the context of modern-day immigration policy.

The Supreme Court has already said that any Venezuelans the White House wants to expel under Mr. Trump’s proclamation invoking the act must be given a chance to challenge their removal. But Judge Rodriguez’s ruling went further, saying that the White House had improperly stretched the meaning of the law, which is supposed to be used only against members of a hostile foreign nation in times of declared war or during a military invasion.

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He also found that the “plain ordinary meaning” of the act’s language, like “invasion” and “predatory incursion,” referred to an attack by “military forces” and did not line up with Mr. Trump’s claims about the activities of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang, in a proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act.

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Department lawyers have consistently maintained that even judges have no power to intrude on the president’s decisions in matters of foreign policy. And while Judge Rodriguez acknowledged that the Alien Enemies Act gives the president “broad powers,” he also said that judges still have the ability to determine whether presidents were using the law correctly.

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Judge Rodriguez, 56, was the first Latino Mr. Trump nominated to the federal bench during his first term. He was a partner at the powerful Houston law firm Baker Botts, and for years worked in Latin America with International Justice Mission, an evangelical Christian group that fights human trafficking.

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