In response to a lawsuit filed by undocumented Venezuelan migrants, a federal judge, appointed by President Trump during his first term, permanently restrained the Trump administration on May 1, 2025, from invoking the Alien Enemies Act (“AEC”), which is an 18th-century wartime law, as the basis to deport Venezuelan nationals the government classified as gang members from the Southern District of Texas, saying “the White House’s use of the statute was not legal.” As noted by Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., "the President’s invocation of the AEC through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms” thereby precluding the administration from using the AEC and Mr. Trump's proclamation to detain, transfer, or remove Venezuelan national migrants who either live in or are detained in the Southern District.
The lawsuit which resulted in the decision was a challenge to the March 15, 2025 Presidential Proclamation “Invocation of the Alien Enemies Act Regarding the Invasion of The United States by Tren De Aragua” suggesting that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (“TdA”) was invading the US and invoking the AEC to deport undocumented migrants, identified by his administration as gang members, without usual court proceedings. On the day of the proclamation, the administration sent 238 Venezuelan nationals accused of being members of the Venezuelan TdA gang and 23 Salvadorans accused of being members of MS-13 to the maximum-security prison in El Salvador, known as CECOT without due process.
As a result of legal challenges to the administration’s deportations, the Supreme Court ordered that any Venezuelans the White House wants to expel under Mr. Trump’s proclamation invoking the act must be given reasonable time to challenge their removal from the US. Interestingly, in the district court decision, Judge Rodriguez went further than the Supreme Court, finding that the “White House had improperly stretched the meaning of the law, which is supposed to be used only against members of a hostile foreign nation, in times of declared war or during a military invasion.” Previously, the AEC was used during both World Wars and the War of 1812.