WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Saturday invoked a centuries-old law last used during World War II to intern Japanese residents to target a Venezuelan criminal gang.
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 is a wartime authority that allows a president to detain or deport citizens of an enemy nation, and has been invoked three times.
It was used in the War of 1812, World War I and, most famously, in World War II between 1942 and 1946 to round up around 120,000 Japanese and Japanese-Americans.
Now, Trump, who has promised supporters an aggressive drive to deport thousands of undocumented migrants, will attempt to use the law against Venezuelan drug gang Tren de Aragua.
In a proclamation published on Saturday, the White House declared that the transnational criminal organization is closely linked to the government of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
“The result is a hybrid criminal state that is perpetrating an invasion of and predatory incursion into the United States,“ the presidential statement said.
Trump finds that Tren de Aragua is “conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime.”
The statement gives Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi 60 days to put the proclamation into effect, making all Tren de Aragua gang members “subject to immediate apprehension, detention, and removal.”
The detention and expulsion order will apply to all Venezuelan Tren de Aragua members who are over 14 and not naturalized US citizens or lawful permanent residents.
It was not immediately clear, however, whether the order will go into effect. Already on Saturday one US judge reportedly preemptively issued an injunction blocking five expulsions.
