President Trump had choice words for the judiciary on Saturday, after a second ruling extended an existing block on deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
“Can it be so that Judges aren’t allowing the USA to Deport Criminals, including Murderers, out of our Country and back to where they came from?” Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“If this is so, our Country, as we know it, is finished! Americans will have to get used to a very different, crime filled, LIFE. This is not what our Founders had in mind!!!”
On Thursday, District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. ruled that the Alien Enemies Act does not allow the President the ability to deport Venezuelan gang members to jail in El Salvador.
Rodridguez Jr. said the law can be used when an “organized, armed force” enters the US, but that Tren de Aragua does not fit the definition intended by the Act.
“The Proclamation makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” Rodridguez Jr. wrote in a 36-page ruling.
“Thus, the Proclamation’s language cannot be read as describing conduct that falls within the meaning of ‘invasion’ for purposes of the AEA.”
President Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to expedite the deportation of foreign gang members has produced a heavy backlash. Within hours of the President’s Executive Order authorizing the use of the Act, Judge James Boasberg issued a ruling blocking the President and ordering deportation planes that were already in the air to return to the US.
Despite Boasberg’s order, hundreds of men alleged to be Venezuelan gang members have been sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison.
In mid-April, the Supreme Court upheld the block.