DENVER ‒ President Donald Trump is preparing to invoke the 1798 Alien Enemies Act to speed up deportations as he makes good on his promise to target violent criminal offenders living illegally in the United States.
Trump has repeatedly referenced using the law passed 277 years ago, and which was previously been used to detain U.S. citizens of Japanese and German descent during World War II, in a chapter that has since been seen as deeply problematic. The law gives the president wartime power to deport people without hearings, if deemed necessary.
Trump has specifically singled out Denver and neighboring suburb Aurora as targets of the enhanced enforcement due to the presence of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Aurora city officials have downplayed Trump’s concerns but have acknowledged the arrest of at least eight known or suspected TdA members in the past year.
“As commander in chief, I have no higher responsibility than to defend our country from threats and invasions, and that is exactly what I am going to do,” Trump said during his Jan. 20 inaugural address.
He went on to say, “by invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to U.S. soil, including our cities and inner cities.”
Trump on Friday is planning to address the Department of Justice, and has singled out Tren de Aragua as an “unusual and extraordinary threat” to the United States. ICE agents have been highlighting recent TdA detentions they’ve made across the country.
The Alien Enemies Act would typically be used to target citizens of a country that has declared war on or invaded the United States, criteria that Venezuela does not meet, experts told USA TODAY.
Upon taking office, Trump issued an executive order toughening immigration enforcement, under the title “Protecting the American people against invasion.” Invoking the Alien Enemies Act might also allow Trump to use more military resources to help conduct deportations, a move he and his advisors have repeated said they plan to make.
Kathleen Bush-Joseph, a policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute, said Trump’s invocation of the law would likely draw swift legal challenges to his “novel” use of the Alien Enemies Act during peacetime, because it might violate the rights of detainees. She said it’s clear the president sees a larger role for the military in conducting deportations.
“I think that the Trump administration is trying to expedite deportations for as many people as they can, and this could be another measure to facilitate that,” she said.
Four Democratic U.S. senators wrote to Trump in January to caution against his use of words like “invasion” to invoke wartime powers, and to reiterate that Congress, not the White House, makes immigration policy.
“The United States is not being invaded, it is not at war with migrants, and you must uphold our duly-enacted immigration laws,” wrote Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Alex Padilla of California, Jamie Raskin of Maryland and Pramila Jayapal of Washington.
During the presidential campaign, Trump promised the largest mass deportation in U.S. history but statistics released last month show federal agents have not significantly increased deportations despite high-profile raids and detentions. Trump earlier this year ordered construction of a 30,000-bed detention facility at Guantanamo Bay; that facility has not yet held more than about 200 deportees at any given time, according to legal filings.
The U.S. military base in Cuba is known for holding terror suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. It gained notoriety following allegations of torture and mistreatment during the U.S. war on terrorism launched by former President George W. Bush’s administration.
