Source: Reason
by Jacob Sullum
“Prior to Trump’s proclamation identifying alleged Tren de Aragua members as ‘alien enemies,’ that 227-year-old statute had been invoked just three times: during the War of 1812, World War I, and World War II. ‘The government seeks to invoke this limited wartime authority to execute removals wholly untethered to any actual or imminent war or to the specific conditions Congress placed in the statute,’ the ACLU notes. The Supreme Court has not yet addressed the legality of Trump’s proclamation. But the historical evidence overwhelmingly indicates that Congress understood an ‘invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States’ in military terms. … the courts ultimately will have to determine whether Trump’s invocation of the AEA against alleged gangsters makes any sense in light of the statute’s language and history. Spoiler alert: It does not.” (04/25/25)