Trump-appointed judge foils Stephen Miller's grand plan

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Trump-appointed judge foils Stephen Miller's grand plan
The Trump administration's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act is finally falling apart

By Heather Digby Parton
Columnist
Published May 2, 2025 8:55AM (EDT)


(Salon) Finally. Due process for the Trump administration's immigrant detainees has been the single most important issue for the courts to address. While it was a relief that the Supreme Court weighed in with an order that all detainees must be allowed the right of habeas corpus, until this week, no judge had ruled on the underlying applicability at the heart of the policy: Trump's invocation of the 1789 Alien Enemies Act. On Thursday, a Trump-appointed judge ordered all deportations in his district to stop. Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a federal judge in Texas and member of the Federalist Society, ruled that it's ridiculous to define the presence of Venezuelan gang members in the country as an “invasion” or “predatory incursion."

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Thank you, Judge Rodriguez. The use of this ancient wartime power, which was only used three times before, and grievously abused in the case of the Japanese and Italian American internment, is an attack on common sense. Of course, we are not at war with Venezuela; the entire assumption is absurd, and the fact that our legal system has been dancing around it for months now is frustrating. Knowing how quickly the Supreme Court can act when it wants to, one hopes they will take up Trump's appeal very quickly and put this nonsense to rest once and for all.

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It's worth taking a look back at how this thing got started. Unsurprisingly, it began with Trump's senior adviser Stephen Miller. The New York Times published a long piece a few days ago about the deportation agenda, noting:

Mr. Miller had long been interested in the Alien Enemies Act, a law passed in 1798 that allows the U.S. government to swiftly deport citizens of an invading nation. The authority has been invoked just three times in the past, all during times of war. He saw it as a powerful weapon to apply to immigration enforcement.

The law “allows you to instantaneously remove any noncitizen foreigner from an invading country, aged 14 or older,” Mr. Miller told the right-wing podcaster Charlie Kirk in a September 2023 interview, adding: “That allows you to suspend the due process that normally applies to a removal proceeding.”

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But that idea of armed migrants carrying weapons of war was the hook Miller had been looking for and soon Trump was talking about the Alien Enemies Act at his campaign rallies, saying that the gang had “invaded and conquered” America, which he called an “occupied state." He spent the rest of the campaign building up this idea of America being invaded by criminals. ...............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2025/05/02/appointed-foils-stephen-millers-grand-plan/

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1. Always nice to Mr. Miller fail.