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Judge bars deportations of Venezuelans from Texas under the Alien Enemies Act
Court Issues |
2025/05/04 17:39
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A federal judge on Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under an 18th-century wartime law and said President Donald Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful.”
U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people who, the Republican administration claims, are gang members invading the United States. Rodriguez said he wouldn’t interfere with the government’s right to deport people in the country illegally through other means, but it could not rely on the 227-year-old law to do so.
“Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”
In March, Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was invading the U.S. He said he had special powers to deport immigrants, identified by his administration as gang members, without the usual court proceedings.
“The Court concludes that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez wrote.
In an interview on Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said the administration will be “aggressively appealing” the ruling and others that hem in the president’s deportation power.
“The judge doesn’t make that determination, whether the Alien Enemies Act can be deployed,” Vance said. “I think the president of the United States is the one who determines whether this country is being invaded.”
The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said in a statement the judge had made clear “what we all knew to be true: The Trump administration illegally used the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process.”
The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times before in U.S. history, most recently during World War II, when it was cited to intern Japanese-Americans.
The proclamation triggered a flurry of litigation as the administration tried to ship migrants it claimed were gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.
Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law. “Congress never meant for this law to be used in this manner,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, in response to the ruling.
Rodriguez agreed, noting that the provision has only been used during the two World Wars and the War of 1812. Trump claimed Tren de Aragua was acting at the behest of the Venezuelan government, but Rodriguez found that the activities the administration accused it of did not amount to an invasion or “predatory incursion,” as the statute requires.
“The Proclamation makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” Rodriguez wrote. “Thus, the Proclamation’s language cannot be read as describing conduct that falls within the meaning of ‘invasion’ for purposes of the AEA.”
If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and it also has ruled against what it saw as overreach on immigration matters by both the Obama and Biden administrations. In those cases, Democratic administrations had sought to make it easier for immigrants to remain in the U.S.
The administration, as it has in other cases challenging its expansive view of presidential power, could turn to appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, in the form of an emergency motion for a stay pending an appeal.
The Supreme Court already has weighed in once on the issue of deportations under the AEA. The justices held that migrants alleged to be gang members must be given “reasonable time” to contest their removal from the country. The court has not specified the length of time.
It’s possible that the losing side in the 5th Circuit would file an emergency appeal with the justices that also would ask them to short-circuit lower court action in favor of a definitive ruling from the nation’s highest court. Such a decision likely would be months away, at least.
The Texas case is just one piece of a tangle of litigation sparked by Trump’s proclamation. |
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Court won’t revive a Minnesota ban on gun-carry permits for young adults
Court Issues |
2025/04/25 14:35
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The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Minnesota asking to revive the state’s ban on gun-carry permits for young adults.
The justices also left in place a ban on guns at the University of Michigan, declining to hear an appeal from a man who argued he has a right to be armed on campus. No justice noted a dissent in either case.
Taken together, the actions reflect the high court’s apparent lack of appetite for cases that further explore the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.”
The court has repeatedly turned away gun cases since its 2022 ruling that expanded gun rights and a clarifying 2024 decision that upheld a federal gun control law that is intended to protect victims of domestic violence.
The decision not to hear the Minnesota case was somewhat surprising because both sides sought the Supreme Court’s review and courts around the country have come to different conclusions about whether states can limit the gun rights of people aged 18 to 20 without violating the Constitution.
The federal appeals court in St. Louis ruled that the Minnesota ban conflicted with the Second Amendment, which the court noted sets no age limit and generally protects ordinary, law-abiding young adults.
In January, the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down a federal law requiring young adults to be 21 to buy handguns.
In February, a federal judge declined to block Hawaii’s ban on gun possession for people under 21.
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Elon Musk dodges DOGE scrutiny while expanding his power in Washington
Court Issues |
2025/02/06 11:36
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Elon Musk made a clear promise after Donald Trump decided to put him in charge of making the government more efficient.
“It’s not going to be some sort of backroom secret thing,” Musk said last year. “It will be as transparent as possible,” maybe even streamed live online. It hasn’t worked out that way so far.
In the three weeks since the Republican president has been back in the White House, Musk has rapidly burrowed deep into federal agencies while avoiding public scrutiny of his work. He has not answered questions from journalists or attended any hearings with lawmakers. Staff members for his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have sidelined career officials around Washington.
It is a profound challenge not only to business-as-usual within the federal government, which Trump campaigned on disrupting, but to concepts of consensus and transparency that are foundational in a democratic system. Musk describes himself as “White House tech support,” and he has embedded himself in an unorthodox administration where there are no discernible limits on his influence.
Donald K. Sherman, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said Trump has allowed Musk to “exert unprecedented power and authority over government systems” with “maximal secrecy and little-to-no accountability.”
The White House insisted that DOGE is “extremely transparent” and shared examples of its work so far, such as canceling contracts and ending leases for underused buildings. House Republicans said the Trump administration also discovered that Social Security benefits were being paid to a dozen people listed as 150 years old.
“We’re going to find billions, hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud and abuse and, you know, the people elected me on that,” Trump said in a Fox News interview to be aired along with the Super Bowl on Sunday. He described Musk as “terrific” and said he would soon focus on the Department of Defense, the country’s largest government agency.
That is true, at least judging by Musk’s social media, where no thought appears to be suppressed. His X account is a flood of internet memes, attacks on critics and professions of loyalty to the president. He has made clear the grand scope of his ambitions, talking in existential terms about the need to reverse the federal deficit, cut government spending and roll back progressive programs.
“This administration has one chance for major reform that may never come again,” he posted on Saturday. “It’s now or never.”
Musk is used to doing things his own way. The world’s richest person, he became wealthy with the online payment service PayPal, then took over the electric car manufacturer Tesla and founded the rocket company SpaceX. More recently, he bought Twitter and rebranded it as X, cutting jobs and remaking its culture.
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will fill Marco Rubio’s Senate seat
Court Issues |
2025/01/18 17:41
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Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody will take Marco Rubio ’s seat in the U.S. Senate, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Thursday, making Moody only the second woman to represent Florida in the chamber.
Elected as the state’s top law enforcement officer in 2018, Moody campaigned on a pledge to voters that she’d be a prosecutor, not a politician. But along with DeSantis, she boosted her political profile during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, calling on the federal government to “hold China responsible” for the outbreak.
In elevating her to the post, DeSantis praised Moody as a key player in his political battles, a law and order prosecutor who’s prepared to help President-elect Donald Trump “secure and shut the border,” rein in inflation, and overhaul what he described as a federal bureaucracy “run amok.”
“I’m ready to show up and fight for this nation and fight for President Trump to deliver the America First agenda on Day 1,” Moody said during Thursday’s announcement at a hotel in Orlando.
“The only way to return this country to the people, the people who govern it, is to make sure we have a strong Congress doing its job, passing laws and actually approving the regulations that these unelected bureaucrats are trying to cram down on the American people,” she added.
Before running for statewide office, Moody worked as a federal prosecutor. In 2006, she was elected to the post of circuit judge in Hillsborough County, home to Tampa. A fifth generation native of Plant City, Florida, Moody was once named queen of the city’s famed strawberry festival. She’s a three-time graduate of the University of Florida and she and her husband, a law enforcement officer, have two sons.
As the state’s attorney general, Moody has been instrumental in defending DeSantis’ conservative agenda in court and has joined other Republican-led states in challenging the Biden administration’s policies, suing over changes to immigration enforcement, student loan forgiveness and vaccine mandates for federal contractors.
“I’m happy to say we’ve had an Attorney General that is somebody that has acted time and time again to support the values that we all share,” DeSantis said. “We in Florida established our state as a beachhead of liberty, as the free state of Florida. And she was with us every step of the way.”
Moody isn’t the state’s only AG to use the office as a stepping stone to a national post. Her predecessor, Pam Bondi, is Trump’s pick to lead the Justice Department and is testifying Thursday in the Senate.
Moody will be the second woman to represent the state in the Senate, and the first in nearly 40 years; Republican Paula Hawkins served in the chamber from 1981-1987.
With the appointment announced, Moody is poised to take office once the vacancy occurs. Rubio is expected to have broad support from Republicans as well as Democrats, and his confirmation vote could come as soon as Monday evening.
Under Florida law, it was up to the Republican governor to choose Rubio’s replacement after Trump picked the three-term senator to be his next secretary of state. Moody will serve in the Senate until the next general election in 2026, when the seat will be back on the ballot.
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