ACLU files suit to block Alien Enemies Act deportations
by Rebecca Beitsch
President Donald Trump speaks in the East Room of the White House in Washington, Thursday, March 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a suit on behalf of two Venezuelan migrants who expect to be deported under the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) and face possible removal to a Salvadoran prison.
The suit is the first in the wake of a Supreme Court decision lifting a temporary restraining order from a lower court that had blocked the Trump administration from using the law to deport people.
“The AEA has only ever been a power invoked in time of war, and plainly only applies to warlike actions: it cannot be used here against nationals of a country—Venezuela—with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States,” the ACLU wrote in the suit filed in New York.
A judge barred the Trump administration from removing the men before a hearing at 10 a.m. Wednesday.
The two men were parties to the original suit from the ACLU seeking to bar the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act as a basis for deportations.
A late Monday ruling from the Supreme Court determined that the D.C. court did not have jurisdiction over the matter, saying that the men would have to sue where they were detained, promoting the suit in New York, where both men are being held in the Orange County Correctional Facility.
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President Trump signed a proclamation on March 14 igniting the wartime powers that have only been used three other times in U.S. history. It’s the first time the law has been used to target gang members, and shortly after signing the order the Trump administration sent more than 100 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, known by its Spanish acronym CECOT.
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