It was something known and announced by Donald Trump from the campaign speech in Aurora (Colorado) last October. It was only missing when. And when it was a Saturday afternoon, when nobody looked. The US president has resurrected the law of foreign enemies of 1789 to accelerate deportations of Venezuelan immigrants related to criminal gangs. Although the norm of the 18th century – when the United States was on the verge of war with France – has only endured standing a couple of hours. Shortly after, a federal judge from Washington has issued an order to precautionary block the deportation of any migrant person under this law three centuries ago.
It is a new encounter between Trump and the courts, which have become the only dike of containment to the absolutist aspirations of US President. At a scheduled hearing at the last minute, after the White House issued the order – because the president was expected to announce on Friday in his speech in the Department of Justice, but he did not do so – it has been resolved to stop its application temporarily and it has been ordered to stop any deportation plan that would have been activated under this rule.
Judge James E. Boasberg has temporarily suspended the execution of the norm, considering that it did not enter within the field of action of the presidential power. Boasberg also considers that it can cause irreparable damage “since these people will be deported, and many or the vast majority will end up in prisons in other countries or will be sent back to Venezuela, where they face persecution or something worse.” Therefore, the judge asked the Department of Justice to comply with “immediately” with the precautionary resolution.
The Law of Foreign Enemies was created when the United States was about to go to war with France in 1789 and it was feared that foreigners or non -citizens who lived in the country could end up sympathizing with the French. Actually it is not a single law, but a package of norms that are included under the same name and that establish that to be considered a American citizen, it must have been resided between 5 and 14 years, giving more margin for the arrests, imprisonments and deportations of foreigners during time of war. In addition, the norm also makes a crime that American citizens “print, pronounce or publish … any false, scandalous and malicious writing” about the government. The law has only applied three times in history, all of them in a context of war time: in the war of 1812, World War I and World War II.
In the text published by the White House, the invocation of the law is justified as a tool to deport those Venezuelan migrants related to the criminal organization of Aragua (TDA, in the acronym used by the Government).
“I proclaim that all 14 -year -old Venezuelan citizens or more who are members of ADD, are in the United States and are not actually naturalized citizens or permanent legal residents of the United States, they are subject to being detained, restricted, insured and expelled as foreign enemies,” says the letter published on the White House page and that has not been communicated via the press service as the rest of the press. He has taken the government in its more than 50 days active.
According to the writing, the law is to be used to persecute Venezuelan migrants related to the Aragua train, but as he published in February, Efe at least three people of Venezuelan nationality have been arrested under the argument of being related to the criminal gang despite the fact that his relatives denounce the opposite. These people were sent to Guantanamo and do not have a criminal record that associates them with the Aragua train, something that the Government does, which has not given public information about the detainees on the island. The only common feature shared by the three men arrested is that they had tattoos.
Trump has described people related to the Aragua Train Band as “the worst of the worst” and has made the criminal group one of the main elements of their xenophobic speeches to criminalize migrants who come to the United States.
Beyond increasing the fear campaign against the migrant community, the invocation of the foreign enemies law coincides with the purge that the Trump government is carrying out within the university campuses. In the period of one week, two international students – with legal status in the country – of the University of Columbia have been arrested for participating in the proper manifestations of the past spring. According to the Republican Administration, participating in the camping against the Gaza War was considered to sympathize with the Islamist group Hamás. At least this is the argument offered last weekend when the Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested, who had a Green Card, for having had an active role in the student mobilizations.
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