In one day, two separate judges rule Trump improperly used 18th century wartime act against gang

The El Valle Detention Center in Raymondville, Texas is pictured, Thursday, May 1, 2025, after a federal judge in the district barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans at the south Texas detention center under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime law. (AP Photo/Valerie Gonzalez)

Two separate federal judges 2,000 miles apart ruled Tuesday that U.S. President Donald Trump improperly used an 18th century wartime law to try to speed the deportations of people his administration labels members of a Venezuelan gang, adding to mounting judicial skepticism over the president’s attempt to avoid deportation hearings by invoking a measure last used in Second World War.

First, District Court Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein in New York found the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 cannot be used against the Tren de Aragua gang because it is not attacking the United States. “TdA may well be engaged in narcotics trafficking, but that is a criminal matter, not an invasion or predatory incursion,” Hellerstein wrote barring deportations from most of New York City and surrounding areas.

Hours later, District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney reached a similar conclusion, expanding on an earlier order that barred the removals of Venezuelans accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua from Colorado. She was aghast at administration arguments that no one can second-guess the president’s designation of the gang as a foreign invader.

That contention “staggers. It is wrong as a matter of law and attempts to read an entire provision out of the Constitution,” Sweeney wrote.

The double-barrelled rejections of Trump come a week after a Trump-appointed judge in South Texas became the first in the nation to reject the president’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, also barring the administration from removing people from that region. None of the orders prevent deportations for reasons other than the act.

The decisions are the latest in a long line of judicial setbacks for the Trump administration’s effort to speed deportations of people in the country illegally. The president and his supporters have increasingly complained about having to provide due process for people they contend didn’t follow U.S. immigration laws.

In his ruling, Hellerstein, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, also ruled that the government cannot use the Alien Enemies Act to shortcut the legal process for deportations that Congress has laid out.

Several other judges across the country are hearing cases challenging Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act in their jurisdictions. Those follow a ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court last month that challenges to Trump’s use of the law have to occur in areas where immigrants are being detained for deportation. The high court unanimously ruled that people held under the Alien Enemies Act had the right to contest their removal in court.

That led the Supreme Court to have to weigh in a second time, in an unusual post-midnight ruling that barred the deportation of people from northern Texas who, the ACLU argued, were about to be shipped out of the country without adequate chance to appeal their designation.

The Trump administration has deported people designated as Tren de Aragua members to a notorious prison in El Salvador where it argues U.S. courts cannot order them freed. Hellerstein referred to the facility as a “notoriously evil jail.”

Nicholas Riccardi, The Associated Press