(WASHINGTON) — Hours after the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in anticipation of the president invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order barring the Trump administration from deporting plaintiffs for two weeks.
The judge also set a hearing for Saturday at 5 p.m.
Although there has been no announcement of the act being invoked, the lawsuit claimed the ACLU and other representing parties have reason to believe President Donald Trump has invoked “or will imminently invoke” the Alien Enemies Act to speed up the administration’s mass deportation goals and target the Tren de Aragua Venezuelan gang.
As early as Friday, Trump was expected to soon invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law that allows the president to detain or deport the natives and citizens of an enemy nation, as part of the efforts to carry out mass deportations, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.
The ACLU is representing five plaintiffs it believes have been moved to detention centers in Texas intended to be “staging facilities to remove Venezuelan men under the AEA,” court documents show. Four of the five plaintiffs have been accused of being members of Tren de Aragua.
The ACLU claims they have been wrongfully accused of being gang members, some seemingly only based on their tattoos, despite the fact that some are seeking protection in the United States from the same gang they’re now accused of being a part of.
The AEA states that it can only be invoked when there is a war with or an invasion by a foreign government or nation. It allows the president to order all citizens of that foreign nation who are not naturalized in the U.S. to be arrested and removed “as alien enemies.”
In essence, members of that hostile nation could be swiftly removed from the country with little to no due process.
The ACLU argues that the government would be illegally invoking the act to target alleged members of Tren de Aragua because the gang is not a nation and there is no invasion as outlined by U.S. law.
“The Trump administration’s intent to use a wartime authority for immigration enforcement is as unprecedented as it is lawless. It may be the administration’s most extreme measure yet, and that is saying a lot,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project and lead counsel.
The Department of Defense is not expected to have a role in the invoking of the authority, which could be used to deport some migrants without a hearing.
There have been discussions inside the administration about invoking the act, multiple sources said.
Trump had previously said on the campaign trail that he planned to invoke the act.
The act hasn’t been used since World War II, when it was used to detain Japanese Americans.
During World War II, the Alien Enemies Act was partially used to justify the internment of Japanese immigrants who had not become U.S. citizens. The broader internment of Japanese-Americans was carried out under executive orders signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and not the Alien Enemies Act since the law does not apply to U.S. citizens.
ABC News’ Peter Charalambous contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2025, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
