The still-current US Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798, is “powerful legislation” that President-elect Donald Trump has promised to use to fulfill his promise of mass deportations. What does it consist of and how viable is its use more than 200 years later?
President-elect Donald Trump made promises to rid the United States of irregular immigrants and end the threat of foreign cartels one of the centerpieces of the campaign he took him back to the White House.
To fulfill his plans, once he takes office on January 20, Trump has announced that he will invoke a little-known legislation, which after more than 200 years of approval still raises controversy due to its implications and uses in the past.
“I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to attack and dismantle all immigrant criminal networks operating on American soil,” Donald Trump said last October 11, at a rally in Aurora, Colorado.
Mentioned in the statutes of the Republican Party By 2024, the legislation would be used to “eliminate all known or suspected gang members, drug traffickers or cartel members from the US, ending once and for all the scourge of illegal immigrant gang violence.”
Trump alluded to it on several occasions, calling it “powerful legislation,” acknowledging that “something like that could not be passed today.”
What does the Law consist of?
Adopted in 1798, when the young United States was on the brink of war with France, it is the last remaining of the four Alien and Sedition Laws. approved by the Fifth Congress and supported by then-President John Adams.
“Their objective was to end the political opposition of immigrants who sympathized with France,” Columbia University history professor Mae Ngai told CNN.
Specifically, the Alien Enemies Act allows the president to detain, relocate or deport non-citizens from a country considered an enemy of the United States in times of war.
Several politicians and activists denounced the set of legislations because they seriously limited civil liberties, even for naturalized Americans, in addition to restricting the freedom of expression of those critical of the government.
According to the US National Archivesafter the election of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, the president repealed or allowed most of the provisions to expire. The Alien Enemies Act – with no expiration date – remained in effect and was even amended in 1918 to include women.
How many times has it been used?
“The Alien Enemies Act is based on the idea that either there is a declared right of war against a State, or there is a predatory invasion or incursion launched by a foreign nation or government into US territory,” he told the Voice of America Suchi Mathur, Immigration expert at the American Immigration Council.
The law has been invoked three times, all in the midst of conflicts in which the country has been involved.
The first was during the War of 1812, which once again pitted a young United States against its former metropolis, Great Britain, in a contest detached from another ongoing war between the French and the British for control of Europe and the world. . At that time it was applied to control and collect information from all British residents in the US.
The second was during the First World War. President Woodrow Wilson invoked it in 1917 against nationals of enemy powers: the German, Austro-Hungarian, Ottoman, and Bulgarian empires. The National Archives register that more than 6,000 “enemy aliens” – many of them Germans – were interned in camps where some remained until two years later, after the Armistice.
The third and most recent occasion was during World War II, when then-President Franklin D. Roosevelt invoked the law after the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1942 against Japanese, German and Italian citizens.
This led to the internment in camps and military facilities of more than 31,000 suspected “enemy aliens” and their families, including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, according to the National Archives, which accounts for several thousand ultimately repatriated to their countries of origin. , whether by choice or by force.
In 1988, Republican President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act to compensate more than 100,000 people of Japanese descent imprisoned in internment camps during World War II.
Would Trump's use of the Law be viable?
During his campaign, Trump promised to use the Act as the basis of his “Operation Aurora,” aimed at identifying, arresting and deporting undocumented immigrants linked to gangs. In addition, he insisted that he will also invoke it to put an end to the so-called “sanctuary cities.”
However, analysts agree that this legislation can only be used legally by the president, once Congress formally declares a war, something that has not happened since 1942. Despite the fact that Trump often speaks of immigrant “invasion” , it would be very difficult for experts to blame a single nation or conflict, which would disqualify it under the letter of the Law.
Defining irregular immigration as an invasion and organized crime cartels as foreign nations would be “an arduous task in federal court,” insisted George Fishman, former deputy general counsel at the Department of Homeland Security under the first Trump administration and one of those who supports the application of this legislation as a valuable tool during future conflicts, even in the face of a possible future confrontation with China.
However, Trump does not need the Alien Enemies Act to persecute undocumented immigrants, Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck told National Public Radio. The expert pointed out that presidents already have the authority to arrest, detain and expel them, the problem is “lack of resources.”
Vladeck insisted that if the president were to invoke the Law, without the obstacle of a Congress in the hands of his party, he would still face judicial blocks almost immediately. Still, the outlook remains uncertain, analysts highlight.