A Trump-appointed judge blocked the deportation of a Venezuelan man over a lack of due process, but conceded that the president has “close to unlimited” authority under a wartime law.
U.S. District Judge John Holcomb on Monday blocked the Trump administration from deporting Darwin Antonio Arevalo Millan under the Alien Enemies Act, an 18th-century wartime authority that President Donald Trump invoked to justify the deportation of Venezuelans.
Arevalo, a vocal critic of the Venezuelan government, applied for asylum in the U.S. and was granted a permit that allowed him to work and reside in the country while his application was pending.
During a scheduled check-in with ICE, however, he was arrested without prior notice or warrant. Arevalo alleged that his arrest was connected to the fact that he was a Venezuelan with tattoos, which the government has used to identify possible members of the gang Tren de Aragua.
Holcomb, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, said the government told the court that it was “unsure” whether it would provide a 14-day notice to detainees before deporting them, despite another court’s earlier conclusion that it was constitutionally required.
“Arevalo seeks to avoid being deported as an alien enemy without being afforded the opportunity to challenge that designation—not to avoid deportation altogether,” Holcomb wrote. “Thus, the potential harm is that, in the absence of preliminary injunctive relief, the government would deport Arevalo without allowing him to challenge his designation as an alien enemy.”
Last month, federal judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr.—also a Trump appointee—blocked further deportations under the Alien Enemies Act after ruling that Trump could not invoke the law without a declaration of war by Congress.
Holcomb saw things differently. He said that the Alien Enemies Act grants the president “close to unlimited” authority in deciding whether an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” has occurred.
“Although some courts have attempted to construe the terms contained in the AEA while purporting to defer to the president’s judgment about the existence of either an invasion or predatory incursion, the court sees no way to strike such a balance,” he wrote.
“The AEA provides that the president—and not an Article III court—may proclaim whether an invasion or predatory incursion exists,” Holcomb added .”Thus, construing those terms is inconsistent with the text of the AEA.”
The Trump administration’s mass deportation blitz has put the executive and the judiciary increasingly at odds. Trump has repeatedly railed against “radical leftist” judges for blocking the implementation of his sweeping agenda, which several courts have restrained.
Last week, however, the Supreme Court handed Trump a big win by allowing the government to revoke the temporary legal status of half a million migrants from Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, and Haiti granted by the Biden administration.
“The court allows the government to do what it wants to do regardless,” liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote in her dissenting opinion, “rendering constraints of law irrelevant and unleashing devastation in the process.”
