Op-ed by Summer Lane | Photo: Courtesy of the Trump Campaign
President Trump declared on a Monday afternoon in Clive, Iowa, that he would invoke the Alien Enemies Act as president again to remove “security threats of any kind from the United States of America.”
His statement drew cheers and applause from an eager crowd of prospective Iowa caucus-goers counting on Trump to restore safety, sanity, and security to the domestic United States upon a potential second term in the White House.
President Trump’s comment about invoking the act came amid his warning that America could be seriously compromised, thanks to the millions of unvetted illegal migrants who have crossed over the southern border since Joe Biden took office in 2021.
He has previously vowed to carry out the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history,” eclipsing former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1953-1954 initiative to accomplish something similar.
But what is the Alien Enemies Act? It’s a safe bet that many Americans aren’t sure where or when the legislation originated, but it has its roots in an early – and eerily similar – chapter of American history.
The Alien and Sedition Acts
The United States was young and fresh-faced in 1798 when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed in Congress by the reigning party of the day, the Federalists. According to the U.S. National Archives, the act was comprised of four laws. The “Alien Enemies Act” (AEA), which is just a portion of the four-pronged legislation, authorized the president to deport aliens and raised the age of residency requirement from five to 14 years old.
The AEA is not to be confused with the “Sedition Act,” which backfired spectacularly on Federalists by making it illegal to print or disseminate “malicious writing” about the federal government.
Because of the disastrous effects of the Sedition Act, Federalists were voted out of power, and a new president, Thomas Jefferson, assumed office in 1801.
While the Sedition Act’s expiration was appropriate (because of its assault on First Amendment rights), lumped into its demise was the “Alien Enemies Act,” which was primarily written up because the U.S. was teetering on the precipice of war with France, the National Archives pointed out.
The base purpose of the AEA was to give emergency authorization to remove potentially dangerous and anti-American non-citizens living within the U.S. who might be harboring French sympathies.
To propose a reimplementation of such an act illustrates just how seriously President Trump is taking the multi-million-man invasion at the southern border. In essence, it recognizes that the U.S. is under assault and potentially embedded with countless unvetted individuals who likely have no plans to proactively assimilate into the U.S. as productive members of society.
Protection from jihadists and extremists
As the Middle East devolves into bloody chaos amid the war between Israel and Hamas terrorists, President Trump has suggested that the “same people” who attacked Israel and murdered men, women, children, and infants are already here.
“Millions of people a month are pouring into our country,” he pointed out in Iowa, noting a “disproportionate” number of young, strong, single men crossing the border.
To combat what is quickly shaping up to be a domestic disaster, Trump has released an eight-point plan to “keep jihadists and their sympathizers out of America.”
The multi-faceted plan includes reinstating and expanding the Trump Travel Ban, a suspension of State Department refugees, deportation of resident aliens with jihadist sympathies, and the introduction of “ideological screening.”
President Trump explained in his recent remarks that “ALL” immigrants into the U.S. will be subjected to this ideological background check. “No longer will we allow dangerous lunatics, haters, bigots, and maniacs to get residency in our country,” he stated.
In an expansion of this screening process, he announced that not only will Islamic extremists, jihadist sympathizers, and Hamas terrorists be “disqualified” from gaining entry into America, but so will Communist, Marxist, and Fascist sympathizers.
Lastly, Trump has pledged to revoke the student visas of “radical anti-American and anti-Semitic foreigners at colleges and universities.”
With the rise of anti-Semitic activity on domestic college campuses around the U.S., Trump’s promise here is especially timely. He reminded Iowans, “…The mobs of pro-Hamas barbarians we saw in the streets of New York and other cities last week have no place in America…no country can sustain it.”
The current threat of terrorism
On Thursday, the U.S. Department of State issued a “Worldwide Caution” alert on the rise of potential terrorist attacks and urged U.S. citizens traveling abroad to remain vigilant and cautious.
In terms of domestic anxieties, Rasmussen Reports stated on X that according to their own data, “75 percent of All Voters are now concerned that the current conflict in Israel will lead to a terrorist attack on the United States, including 43 percent who are very concerned.”
As reported by RSBN, Trump ally and Republican Senate candidate in Arizona, Kari Lake, recently predicted that because of the unsecured southern border, “…Eventually, there will be violence because of this. We’re going to be attacked by people coming across who don’t love America.”
Considering the perilous circumstances that Joe Biden’s horrifically inept border security policies have put America in, voters today must realize that the U.S. is hardly a sovereign country. With the border wide open and endless tributaries of unknown foreigners rushing in, there is no way to know who has settled into America’s states, cities, and counties.
In 1953, Eisenhower empowered the Immigration Bureau and Border Patrol to round up illegal migrants who had crossed the border by the millions in the 1950s. According to Immigration History, the Bureau and Border Patrol claimed to have deported one million people.
Trump has vowed to pull off the same operation, but by his estimate, at least “15 million” people have crossed into the U.S. since Biden walked into the Oval Office. Truly, the scope of the border crisis is hard to comprehend, especially when one considers that the desecration of American sovereignty has happened in just under three short years.
With Trump back in the White House in 2025, Americans can expect an aggressive and no-holds-barred approach that will restore U.S. safety, kick extremists to the curb, and reimplement sane and fair immigration policies to America once more.