The president invoked a 1798 law in order to deport alleged gang members - and paid no attention when a judge sought to block him
WASHINGTON DC – Frustrated at the relatively sedate pace with which mass deportations have been taking place since his return to the White House, President Donald Trump made his move over the weekend.
Seeking to supercharge his promised effort to deport “millions and millions” of people from the United States, he reached back in history in order to find a law that could literally help him circumvent the law.
By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Trump wants to grease the wheels for the Immigration, Customs and Enforcement division (ICE) of the US government as it rounds people up and swiftly throws them out of the country.
The 18th century statute is designed to be used only after Congress has approved a declaration of war arising from “invasion or predatory incursion” of the country.
The law was infamously invoked during the Second World War to target more than 30,000 people of German, Italian and Japanese descent in the United States.
In 1942, it also reinforced efforts by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt to justify his internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans in a series of concentration camps, most of them in the western reaches of the country.
On Friday, Trump invoked the Act as he ordered the deportation of five Venezuelans, accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, a criminal gang that the United States has designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization.
But on Saturday evening, as those five individuals were reportedly about to be flown out of the country, a judge sought to block their removal.
Judge James Boasberg ruled in US District Court that he needed more time to consider whether the Alien Enemies Act was being properly applied to the Tren de Aragua suspects.
Salvadoran police officers escort an alleged member of the Tren de Aragua recently deported by the U.S. government to be imprisoned in the Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT) prison, as part of an agreement with the Salvadoran government, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, in this handout image obtained March 16, 2025. Secretaria de Prensa de la Presidencia/Handout via REUTERS ATTENTION EDITORS - THIS IMAGE HAS BEEN SUPPLIED BY A THIRD PARTY. NO RESALES. NO ARCHIVES
Salvadoran police officers escort an alleged member of the Tren de Aragua (Photo:Secretaria de Prensa de la Presi Provider/Reuters)
He ordered the administration to halt any planned deportation flights, and ruled that any planes already in the air should turn around mid-flight and bring the deportees back to the United States.
On Sunday, the White House offered its withering response. Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt indicated that the judge’s order had been entirely disregarded.
Citing an “urgent threat” to the American people from Tren de Aragua, she announced that the Department of Homeland Security had saved “countless American lives” by arresting a further 300 gang members over the weekend.
“These heinous monsters were extracted and removed to El Salvador where they will no longer be able to pose any threat to the American people”, she proclaimed in a statement that made no reference to Judge Boasberg’s ruling, but made it clear that the White House had simply ignored it.
In another case, it emerged that on Friday, authorities in Boston deported Dr Rasha Alawieh, an Assistant Professor of Medicine at Brown University, despite a judge’s order requiring them to provide his court with 48 hours’ notice of her removal. Dr Alawieh was detained at Logan Airport last Thursday after returning from a family visit to Lebanon.
She was in possession of a valid H1B visa supporting her work at Brown Medicine’s Division of Kidney Disease and Hypertension, and no reasons were provided for her removal from the country.
George Bayliss, a doctor at Brown Medicine, described himself as “outraged”, calling her deportation an “affront to democracy”.
Activists seeking to support immigrants who are being targeted by the Trump administration and removed from the United States regardless of due legal process, now fear that the weekend’s actions have shown the White House will no longer respect any court ruling that seeks to tie the president’s hands.
As Trump seeks to expand the powers of the presidency, and diminish the role played by Congress and the courts, his supporters insist that he alone can serve as the arbiter of who gets to stay in the United States and who is thrown out.
Trump also intends to shut the country’s doors to travellers from up to 43 countries listed on a new “travel ban” that he is reportedly preparing to announce.
A leaked draft of the president’s plans was published by The New York Times on Saturday, and suggests that citizens from 11 countries may be completely banned from entering the United States, with varying restrictions being placed on passport holders from 32 other nations. African countries make up nearly half the nations on the draft list.
On Sunday, Trump secured support in his efforts to flout court orders aimed at grounding deportation flights from a populist ally.
President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, whose country is being paid by the US to confine the Venezuelan deportees, posted images of their arrival on his social media accounts, including video of them being shackled, manhandled and forcibly shorn of their hair.
Referring to a newspaper account of Judge Boasberg’s ruling seeking to block the deportation flights, Bukele wrote: “Oopsie… too late”.