President Donald Trump is expected to fast-track the deportations of many migrants by invoking the Alien Enemies Act, according to multiple media reports.
Democrats are already denouncing the likely use of the 1798 law which allows fast-track deportations of citizens from nations that are conducting an “invasion or predatory incursion” of the United States.
Trump is expected to apply the “predatory incursion” charge against Venezuela. But he may also apply the charge to other governments — such as the Cuban or Nicaraguan dictatorships — that gain economic remittances by sending their young men to the United States to work.
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) arrives for a news conference on re-introducing the Neighbors Not Enemies Act on Capitol Hill on January 22, 2025 in Washington, DC. The Neighbors Not Enemies Act seeks to repeal the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. (Kent Nishimura/Getty Images)
In 2017, Trump declared a national emergency to accelerate the construction of his border wall, and in 2020, Trump invoked the Title 42 anti-epidemic law to exclude migrants.
He may announce the policy on Friday, March 14, the New York Times reported:
Mr. Trump wants to use the law to expel suspected members of drug cartels and criminal gangs, including the Venezuelan group Tren de Aragua, people familiar with the matter say. The administration already has designated the Venezuelan gang a terrorist organization. The government intends to send some of those arrested through the authority to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, according to a person familiar with the matter.
CBS News reported:
Those [migrants] subject to the Alien Enemies Act would not be allowed to have a court hearing or an asylum interview since they would be processed under an emergency, wartime authority — not immigration law. Instead, they would be eligible to be detained and deported, with little to no due process, under Title 50, the section of the U.S. code housing America’s war and defense laws.
Democrats denounced the move on Tuesday, in a March 11 letter to Trump, saying:
As a legal matter, migration is not an “invasion.” As courts have consistently held, an “invasion” under the Constitution requires “armed hostility from another political entity, such as another state or foreign country that is intending to overthrow the [] government.” Courts’ requirement of an armed attack is consistent with how the term “invasion” is used throughout the Constitution, alongside language like “insurrection” and “rebellion.”
The Democrats’ letter did not mention the “predatory incursion” aspect of the law.
The letter was signed by four pro-migration Democrats, including Sen. Richard Durbin (D-IL), the top Democrat on the Senate’s judiciary committee, and Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the senior Democrat on the immigration panel of the House Committee on the Judiciary.
In general, Democrats look down on migrants as pitiful economic refugees. Democrats rarely admit that migrants — and their home governments — are clever enough to rationally exploit the U.S. government’s asylum policies for the benefit of themselves, their families, and their home countries.
The 1798 law is one of the many sections in U.S. immigration law that have fallen into disuse because their original purposes were no longer valid. For example, new citizens are still required to renounce aristocratic titles, and also to swear they were neither Nazi camp guards of members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
The law says [emphasis added]:
Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event, 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, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.
The President is authorized in any such event, by his proclamation thereof, or other public act, to direct the conduct to be observed on the part of the United States, toward the aliens who become so liable; the manner and degree of the restraint to which they shall be subject and in what cases, and upon what security their residence shall be permitted, and to provide for the removal of those who, not being permitted to reside within the United States, refuse or neglect to depart therefrom; and to establish any other regulations which are found necessary in the premises and for the public safety.
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