President Trump is expected to invoke an 18th century law giving him wartime powers to deport migrants en masse.
He intends to apply the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as soon as Friday, multiple sources have confirmed to CNN.
The law would grant the president sweeping power to target and deport undocumented immigrants while sidestepping the immigrant court system, which is facing huge case backlogs. The Department of Homeland Security announced on Tuesday that immigration detention has been maxed out.
Designed to be used during wartime or in the event of an invasion from a foreign nation, the act has only been invoked three times in U.S. history—most recently by President Franklin D. Roosevelt after the Japanese attacks on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
According to CNN, Trump’s primary target is Tren de Aragua (TDA), a Venezuelan crime group operating in the U.S. that was recently designated as a foreign terrorist organization.
But legal experts argue that it will be difficult for Trump to legally justify invoking the law in the absence of a military attack or foreign invasion.
“There is no military invasion or military predatory incursion being perpetrated by an actual foreign nation or government,” Katherine Yon Ebright of the Brennan Center at New York University told CNN, noting that its invocation would be challenged as an abuse of a wartime authority.
Trump has long expressed his intention to use the act in his push for “mass deportations,” pledging to do so during his campaign and his second inaugural address.
“By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil, including our cities and inner cities,” Trump stated in January.
The law was invoked during both World War I and World War II to deport thousands of German, Austro-Hungarian, Italian, and Japanese nationals. Critics note that it has a long history of being used to target individuals based on their identity rather than any proven threat to national security.
