Why Courts Blocked Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans

President Donald Trump’s use of a 227-year-old wartime law to deport accused Venezuelan gang members to an El Salvador mega-prison without legal due process triggered lawsuits across the US. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 allows a president to unilaterally detain or deport almost all citizens of an enemy nation during a war or invasion. Asserting the law in peacetime, as Trump did in a March proclamation, is unprecedented and tests the boundaries of executive power.