President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 on Saturday in a bold plan to crack down on the scourge of Venezuela’s most notorious cartel.
The sweeping wartime authority allows the president broader leeway on policy and executive action and will enable him to speed up mass deportations of people and pushes his promised crackdown on immigration into higher gear.
Trump’s declared Tren de Aragua as targets, contending it is a hostile force acting at the behest of Venezuela’s government. The gang has been linked to kidnapping, extortion, organized crime and contract killings.
Trump said members of the gang were ‘conducting irregular warfare and undertaking hostile actions against the United States’ with the goal of destabilizing the country.
The declaration comes the same day that a federal judge in Washington barred the administration from deporting five Venezuelans under the expected order, a hint at the legal battle brewing over Trump’s move.
The judge was scheduled to consider expanding the prohibition on deportation just minutes after Trump’s afternoon announcement.
DailyMail.com was the first news organization in the US to report on TdA arriving in America over a year ago, however, the gang became a household name after video of them storming an apartment near Denver surfaced in August.
Veneauelan gang Tren de Aragua are operating across numerous cities in the United States
Armed men were seen at a Denver, Colorado apartment complex from the gang last year
Two of the 19 individuals arrested during the October 19 raid at the Palatia Apartments in San Antonio where authorities say Tren de Aragua had been operating
The act was last used as part of the internment of Japanese-American civilians during World War II and has only been used two other times in American history, during World War I and the War of 1812.
Trump argued in his declaration that it is justified because he contends the Tren de Aragua gang has ties to the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Trump made the threat posed by the gang a regular feature of his campaign speeches as evidence of what he called a spike in ‘migrant crime.’
‘Over the years, Venezuelan national and local authorities have ceded ever-greater control over their territories to transnational criminal organizations, including TdA,’ Trump’s statement reads.
‘The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States, and which poses a substantial danger to the United States.’
Civil rights groups and some Democrats have criticized the idea of reviving it to fuel mass deportations and the move will likely trigger legal challenges.
The Trump administration in February designated Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel and six other criminal groups as global terrorist organizations.
Experts on criminal organizations say the group has not established a strong foothold in the US, where its members likely only number in the hundreds and makeup just a small fraction of the nearly 800,000 Venezuelans who live in the country.
Saturday’s directive said that Tren de Aragua ‘has engaged in and continues to engage in mass illegal migration to the United States to further its objectives of harming United States citizens.’
While the proclamation was released by the White House on Saturday, the wording suggests Trump signed it on Friday.
Tren de Aragua gang tattoos (pictured above) were part of a Department of Homeland Security bulletin that was recently shared with federal agents
The Prairie View Police Department arrested three suspected Tren de Aragua associates last month who were wanted for their alleged involvement in multi-state sex trafficking ring operated by Tren de Aragua
Niefred Jose Serpa-Acosta, 20, a known TdA member, presents himself to police with hands up and dressed as a woman. Officers encountered Serpa-Acosta on Dec. 16 after he took part in a vicious the kidnapping and torture of a Venezuelan couple
In September, Venezuelan authorities, under the direction of dictator Maduro, raided Tocorón Penitentiary – the gang’s de facto headquarters
Trump made the threat posed by the gang a regular feature of his campaign speeches as evidence of what he called a spike in ‘migrant crime’. Pictured here in October
Under Trump’s proclamation, all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are found to be members of the gang, are within the United States, and are not naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the country are ‘liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies.’
The Tren de Aragua gang originated in a prison in the South American country and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone last decade.
Trump and his allies have turned the gang into the face of the alleged threat posed by immigrants living in the US illegally and formally designated it a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ last month.
Authorities in several countries have reported arrests of Tren de Aragua members, even as Venezuela’s government claims to have eliminated the criminal organization.
Trump pledged to use the Alien Enemies Act during his presidential campaign, and immigration groups were braced for it.
That led to Saturday’s unusual lawsuit, filed before Trump’s declaration even became public.
The suit by the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward on behalf of five Venezuelans whose cases suddenly moved towards deportation in recent hours.
James E. Boasberg, chief judge of the D.C Circuit, agreed to implement a temporary restraining order preventing the deportation for 14 days under the act of the five Venezuelans who are already in immigration custody and believed they were being about to be deported.
Boasberg said his order was ‘to preserve the status quo.’
‘I do not believe I can wait any longer and am required to act,’ he said during a Saturday evening hearing in a lawsuit brought by the ACLU and Democracy Forward.
‘A brief delay in their removal does not cause the government any harm,’ Boasberg added, noting they remain in government custody but ordering that any planes in the air be turned around.
Venezuela’s most violent gang Tren de Aragua has moved its headquarters to just across the US border in the Mexican town of Ciudad Juarez
An FBI raid in Houston resulted in the detention of two suspected Tren de Aragua associates and the seizure of drugs and a gun
The FBI arrest a suspected Tren de Aragua member last month in Houston
Henry Carmona, 48, right, who fled Venezuela after receiving death threats for refusing to participate in demonstrations in support of the government, stands with friends to denounce changes to the protections that shielded hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans from deportation
President Donald Trump on Saturday invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1978, a sweeping wartime authority that allows the president broader leeway on policy and executive action to speed up mass deportations of people
Hours later, the Trump administration appealed the initial restraining order, contending that halting a presidential act before it has been announced would cripple the executive branch.
If the order were allowed to stand, ‘district courts would have license to enjoin virtually any urgent national-security action just upon receipt of a complaint,’ the Justice Department wrote in its appeal.
It said district courts might then issue temporary restraining orders on actions such as drone strikes, sensitive intelligence operations, or terrorist captures or extraditions. The court ‘should halt that path in its tracks,’ the department argued.
The unusual flurry of litigation highlights the controversial act, which could give Trump vast power to deport people in the country illegally. It could let him bypass some protections of normal criminal and immigration law to swiftly deport those his administration contends are members of the gang.
The DOJ released these images in 2020, as it charged top members of the Venezuela’s government, including current President Nicolas Maduro, with being drug traffickers
In the superseding indictment, US prosecutors allege Venezuela’s government trafficked tons of cocaine into the US. The feds claim the ‘Cartel de los Soles,’ which Madro leads, used an ‘air bridge’ to move the drugs into the US
Almost a dozen migrants with suspected links to the bloodthirsty Tren de Aragua gang were arrested following ICE raids across several states last month. Pictured, a raid in Houston
Several properties across the Denver area were raided as part of the Tren de Aragua crackdown also last month
The White House is preparing to move about 300 people it identifies as members of the gang to detention in El Salvador.
Trump returned to the White House on January 20 vowing to deport millions of immigrants living in the US illegally but his initial deportations have lagged behind those of his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden, who faced high levels of illegal immigration and rapidly deported many recent border crossers.
Trump has taken an array of actions to step up immigration enforcement, sending additional troops to the US-Mexico border and reassigning federal agents to help track down immigration offenders.
But his administration has had to contend with backed-up immigration courts and limited detention space.
