Appeals Court Weighs Trump Admin’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport

A three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard arguments on March 24 on whether to halt a lower court’s order that prevented the Trump administration from deporting alleged members of a Venezuelan gang under the Alien Enemies Act.

It’s unclear how the court will rule, but at least one judge, Judge Patricia Millett, seemed skeptical of the administration’s position.

Judge Justin Walker, meanwhile, asked multiple questions of both sides but seemed sympathetic to the administration’s arguments.

More specifically, she took issue with the administration not stating that it had provided some kind of hearing for individuals who were subject to removal.

Walker asked multiple questions of Lee Gelernt, the American Civil Liberties Union attorney representing the plaintiffs, and made comments indicating skepticism of Gelernt’s case.

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During the hearing, he pressed Gelernt for an example of a court order that survived appeal and stopped an ongoing partially overseas national security operation.

In his March 24 opinion, Boasberg stated that individuals were “entitled to individualized hearings to determine whether the [Alien Enemies] Act applies to them at all.”

The administration was seeking on March 24 to have the appeals court stop Boasberg’s halt on the president’s implementation of the proclamation.

Boasberg’s order, Ensign said during oral argument, “represents an unprecedented and enormous intrusion upon the powers of the executive branch.”

“It enjoins the president’s exercise of his war and foreign affairs powers under the Alien Enemies Act and does so in a manner that purports to direct operations outside the United States’ borders and in a manner that could intrude upon sensitive diplomatic negotiations,” Ensign said.

He also said that the appropriate legal avenue for the plaintiffs was through a petition for habeas corpus, a point that faced some pushback from Millett.

Filed earlier this month, the lawsuit was brought by five plaintiffs who said they faced removal under Trump’s proclamation— including some who said they either weren’t part of Tren de Aragua or, in fact, were victimized by the group.

The administration has not removed the five plaintiffs but has removed others as part of flights that took place on the same day as a hearing in which Boasberg blocked the implementation of Trump’s proclamation.

Earlier this month, Boasberg granted class certification, meaning that the lawsuit encompassed more than just the five plaintiffs and grew to include “all noncitizens in U.S. custody who are subject to the March 15, 2025, presidential proclamation.”

During an exchange with Gelernt, Walker seemed to wonder why the case was brought in the District of Columbia when prospective plaintiffs were elsewhere in the country.

“The strangest place of all to file would be in Washington, D.C., where there’s likely not a single person detained under the [Alien Enemies Act],” Walker said.

Gelernt responded: “People are being moved from every part of the country. So we actually don’t know whether people were originally in D.C.”