‘It's un-American and I hope that the courts will find it illegal’ - legal experts on Venezuelan deportations

Diario As

18/3/2025

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00:00The administration's non-compliance with the judge's order in conducting deportations

00:19under the Alien Enemies Act, after a judge had said that those deportations could not

00:23proceed, does pose a serious threat to our system of checks and balances to rule of law

00:28in the United States. It is part of a troubling pattern, however, of non-compliance with district

00:35court orders or trial court orders. I think the real test is whether we see continued

00:41non-compliance. And I know that ACLU, which is representing the plaintiffs and trying

00:47to prevent the use of the Alien Enemies Act outside the scope of its text, that they are

00:53raising the non-compliance with the court today.

00:58It doesn't matter in these cases whether the planes were over international waters or not, the defendants,

01:18the President Trump, the Secretary of Homeland Security, those folks were all within D.C.,

01:23and so subject to federal jurisdiction. The larger issue is the Trump administration seems

01:28invested in making this a fight. And that really does raise this huge question of what

01:33happens if the executive branch can get away with defying court orders. I don't think,

01:39you know, non-compliance with one order in one case is necessarily the end of the rule

01:45of law, but the question is what is to compel the government to comply in future cases?

01:51Because in a world in which the government can pick and choose which court orders it

01:54wants to comply with, the law is going to be whatever the President says, not whatever

01:58the courts say.

01:59This is a time of war, because Biden allowed millions of people, many of them criminals,

02:05many of them at the highest level. They emptied jails out, other nations emptied their jails

02:11into the United States. That's an invasion. And these are criminals, many, many criminals,

02:17murderers, drug dealers at the highest level, drug lords, people from mental institutions.

02:25That's an invasion.

02:27The reason that the President is invoking the Alien Enemies Act is to bypass those due

02:32process protections that exist in immigration law. This wartime authority has never been

02:38interpreted to include due process protections for individuals who are the citizens or natives

02:44of a country with which we're at war. And so even if a person is not actually a member

02:49of Trinidad and Tobago, just the government is accusing them of that without evidence,

02:56Trump is hoping that that will be enough for him to put people into detention and then

03:00deport them out of the country. So deporting people who we actually don't know what they've

03:06done, deporting people who very well may be innocent.

03:10And then I think the other thing that's worth noting here is that the Alien Enemies Act

03:14proclamation issued by the President includes people who are lawfully present in the United

03:20States, whether they're visa holders, individuals under TPS programs, or alternatively, individuals

03:27with credible, valid asylum claims who are here lawfully.

03:30Some of the behind the scenes on how he carried out some of the deportations in the play.

03:37President did the right thing on standby. We removed in one day over 200 dangerous people,

03:43including MS-13. It was the right thing to do. I see the video that President Bukele

03:47put out. It's a beautiful thing. These people are going to be held accountable.

03:52You might think, we might all think, that a lot of these folks are bad people who shouldn't

03:56be in the United States, but they're entitled to a legal process to make sure, one, that

04:01they are who the government says they are, two, that the government has the authority

04:05it's claiming that it has, and three, that we're not sending them into conditions where

04:09they credibly fear torture or other forms of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment.

04:17So part of why I think we're seeing so much litigation activity is because it's pretty

04:29hard to unring the bell. Once individuals are removed from the United States, once they're

04:34handed off to other countries, that's probably the point at which the ability of federal

04:38courts to compel the return of those individuals stops. It's part of why we're seeing efforts

04:43to actually block the removals before they happen. Up to that point, though, I think

04:48it's well established that the federal courts have the power to halt the removal from the

04:53United States of citizens, non-citizens, criminals, non-criminals, whomever, until providing the

05:00process that's required by statutes and by the Constitution. So the remedies we're talking

05:05about here are the remedies we're seeing, which is temporary restraining orders, preliminary

05:09injunctions, maybe even writs of habeas corpus, to ensure that the government can't just point

05:14at someone, accuse them of something, and use it as the basis for summarily removing

05:18them from the United States.

05:21I don't want to downplay the tremendous seriousness, gravity, of what our constitutional system,

05:30not having appropriate checks and balances, would look like. And what we saw the last

05:34time that the Alien Enemies Act was invoked was it was used to intern 31,000 non-citizens

05:40of Japanese, German, and Italian descent based on their ancestry, not actually based on their

05:45conduct or any dangerousness that could have been shown through due process. And that was

05:51during a real war. That was from a president who was actually trying to keep the country

05:56safe in World War II. We all agree, I think, that internment was shameful and that it shouldn't

06:04not be repeated. Now imagine this same tool that was responsible for 31,000 people being

06:10interned without due process being turned against immigrants who are here lawfully,

06:15who may be here unlawfully, simply based on where they were born. It's un-American, and

06:23I hope that the courts will find it illegal.

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