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The Trump administration asked the nation’s highest court on Friday to weigh in on its use of the Alien Enemies Act after the D.C. Circuit of Appeals ruled to uphold a lower court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) preventing the immediate deportation of illegal Venezuelan nationals.
In the filing, Trump administration lawyers wrote, “This case presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security-related operations in this country—the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs. The Constitution supplies a clear answer: the President. The republic cannot afford a different choice.”
It included Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s naming of Tren de Aragua (TdA) as a designated global terrorist group on February 6. The filing noted that President Trump recognized “the acute danger that TdA presents to our national security and noted his determination that “thousands of members” have illegally “infiltrated” the United States.
The filing emphasized President Trump’s decision to invoke his Article II powers. “Upon finding that ‘TdA is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction of the Maduro regime in Venezuela,’” Trump administration lawyers wrote, “the President invoked his Article II powers, coupled with his authority under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA).”
Additionally, the filing highlighted the President’s authority to use the Alien Enemies Act, pointing out that it “has long authorized summary removal of enemy aliens engaged in ‘invasions or predatory incursions’ of U.S. territory.”
The lawyers argued that the lower court’s orders have “rebuffed the President’s judgments as to how to protect the Nation against foreign terrorist organizations and risk debilitating effects for delicate foreign negotiations.”
The filing asks the court to “vacate the orders issued by the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia and requested “an immediate administrative stay of the district court’s order pending the Court’s consideration” of the application.
The Trump administration is confident it will succeed on the merits, and Supreme Court precedent may result in a quick ruling from the Supreme Court.
One user on X pointed to a 1948 Supreme Court case reaffirming the 1798 law. It held that “The Alien Enemy Act precludes judicial review of the removal order.”