Trump’s single most aggressive attack on immigrants is now before the Supreme Court

For the moment, at least, a lower court order blocks Trump’s Alien Enemies Act proclamation; that order is still in effect, although there is ongoing litigation about whether the Trump administration defied it by sending dozens of Venezuelan immigrants to a prison in El Salvador after the lower court ordered the planes carrying these immigrants to be turned around. Federal cases brought in Texas appeal to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, a far-right court that routinely interprets the law in creative ways to benefit right-wing causes and the Republican Party, something likely to put anyone trying to stop a deportation at a disadvantage. When properly invoked, the law permits the federal government to arrest, detain, and remove “all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being of the age of fourteen years and upward, who shall be within the United States and not actually naturalized.” So during a declared war with Germany, the president may order nearly all German citizens removed from the United States, regardless of whether those German nationals took any aggressive or criminal action whatsoever.

Author: Ian Millhiser

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