The American Civil Liberties Union and its Texas branch filed an emergency lawsuit Wednesday morning to try to stop the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act for deportations again.
Not long after, federal judges in Texas and New York took legal action to block the government from moving five Venezuelans out of the country.
Three men are being detained in a facility in Texas, while two more are being held in an Orange County, New York, facility. One man in Texas is HIV positive and fears lacking access to medical care if deported.
Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. signed a temporary restraining order in Texas while Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein said at a New York hearing that he planned to sign a temporary restraining order as well to block removals while the court challenges proceed.
Civil liberties lawyers sued Wednesday in response to a divided U.S. Supreme Court lifting a previously-issued temporary restraining order on Monday, allowing those deportations to continue under the rarely used 18th century wartime law.
The Alien Enemies Act — something that has only been used during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II — is something the Trump administration is trying to use as a tool for bypassing immigration law, the ACLU said.
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Although the Supreme Court decided 5 to 4 that the administration can use the act for deportations, it did say that people targeted for removal under the act are entitled to challenge their removals and must have meaningful notice and opportunity to do so.
So far, 137 Venezulan men accused of being Tren de Aragua gang members have been flown to a notorious El Salvador prison under the act. It’s unclear how the Supreme Court’s recent ruling will impact those deportees.
The ruling on Monday did not address whether or not using the act to deport the immigrants is constitutional.
The ACLU’s newly filed lawsuit claims the Alien Enemies Act can only be applied to warlike actions and can’t be used against nationals of a country with which the U.S. is not at war.
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What is the Alien Enemies Act?
In 1798, with the U.S. preparing for what it believed would be a war with France, Congress passed a series of laws that increased the federal government's reach. The Alien Enemies Act was created to give the president wide powers to imprison and deport noncitizens in time of war.
Since then, the act has been used just three times: during the War of 1812 and the two world wars.
It was part of the World War II legal rationale for mass internments in the U.S. of people of German, Italian and especially Japanese ancestry. An estimated 120,000 people with Japanese heritage, including those with U.S. citizenship, were incarcerated.
Can the U.S. use a wartime law when it's not at war?
For years, Trump and his allies have argued that the U.S. is facing an "invasion" of people arriving in the country illegally.
Arrests on the U.S. border with Mexico topped 2 million a year for two straight years for the first time under President Joe Biden, with many released into the U.S. to pursue asylum. After hitting an all-time monthly high of 250,000 in December 2023, they dropped sharply in 2024 and dramatically more after Trump took office.
The Trump administration has increasingly described the migrant issue as a war, most notably by designating eight Latin American criminal groups, including Tren de Aragua and MS-13, as "foreign terrorist organizations."
Trump's invocation of the act, which was publicly announced March 15, the same day as the deportations, said Tren de Aragua was attempting "an invasion or predatory incursion" of the United States.
Administration officials now regularly use military terminology to describe the situation, with Trump telling reporters last month that "this is a time of war."
Trump's critics insist he is wrongly invoking an act designed for use during declared wars.
"Trump's attempt to twist a centuries-old wartime law to sidestep immigration protections is an outrageous and unlawful power grab—and it threatens the core civil liberties of everyone," Scott Michelman, legal director of the ACLU of the District of Columbia, said in a statement after the Monday ruling.
How has the legal case proceeded?
The ACLU and Democracy Forward preemptively sued Trump hours before the March 15 deportations began, saying five Venezuelan men held at a Texas immigration detention center were at "imminent risk of removal" under the Alien Enemies Act. U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg blocked their deportation, prompting an immediate Justice Department appeal.
Later that day, Boasberg issued a new order to stop the deportations being carried out under the centuries-old law, and said any planes in the air needed to turn around. By then, though, two ICE Air planes were heading across the Gulf of Mexico and toward Central America. Neither came back.
