CREATORS: Invoking the Alien Enemies Act Is About More Than Deportations

Matthew T. Mangino
CREATORS
March 25, 2025

The Alien Enemies Act was enacted in 1798 to combat spying and sabotage during tensions with France. The Act authorizes the president to deport, detain or place restrictions on individuals whose primary allegiance is to a foreign power and who might pose a national security risk in wartime.

The law is explicitly predicated on the existence of a declared war, invasion or predatory incursion. The text and history of the Act indicate that invasion and predatory incursion refer to acts of war, specifically armed attacks on United States soil. Former presidents have invoked the law only in times of war.

According to an October 2024 report from The Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, "There is no plausible basis for saying that migration or narcotics trafficking constitutes an invasion or predatory incursion."

Nevertheless, the Trump administration believes the Alien Enemies Act can be used to address unlawful migration and drug trafficking — acts that they frame as "a rhetorical, nonmilitary invasion or predatory incursion."

Based on that interpretation, the Trump administration invoked the Act to forcibly deport 238 alleged Venezuelan gang members. The administration asserted that the gang, Tren de Aragua, was invading the United States in order to justify their deportations under the law. The alleged gang members were flown to an El Salvador prison without due process hearings.

Some of those deported have no criminal records in the United States and no apparent ties to the gang. The Washington Post reported on four men deported who had moved to the Dallas area together, working in retail and food-production jobs to support their families back in Venezuela.

Upon an action filed by the ACLU, Federal District Court Judge James Boasberg temporarily blocked any deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, writing that the law refers to hostile acts perpetrated by another nation.

Boasberg blocked the administration's deportation action and ordered the two flights to be turned around in midair and returned to the United States. The Trump administration did not follow the order, stating later that the flights were outside of U.S. airspace and therefore outside of the judge's jurisdiction.

"You did tell them it was an order from me to turn the planes around ... to bring back people to the United States? You understood that," Boasberg said during a recent hearing according to CBS News. "Did you understand that when I said 'do that immediately,' I meant it?"

The Justice Department has argued that because Boasberg's verbal order was not reflected in a written order, it was not binding.

President Donald Trump raised the stakes by calling for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg. According to The New York Times, Trump described the judge on social media as a "Radical Left Lunatic."

A few hours later, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. issued a statement, seemingly prompted by the president's comments, "For more than two centuries, it has been established that impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement concerning a judicial decision." The chief justice continued, "The normal appellate review process exists for that purpose."

Concern is growing among legal scholars. "If anyone is being detained or removed based on the administration's assertion that it can do so without judicial review or due process," Jamal Greene, a law professor at Columbia told The New York Times, "The president is asserting dictatorial power and 'constitutional crisis' doesn't capture the gravity of the situation."

The Trump administration has backed off for now. First, Trump told reporters he didn't sign off on the order directing the deportation, and Border Czar Tom Homan said that deportations of migrants under the Alein Enemies Act will continue, but he conceded in the meantime that he will obey the judge's order, according to The Hill.

Homan said during a recent NewsNation interview, "I'll wait until the DOJ and the courts fight this out as far as the Alien Enemies Act (and) how far we will go."

Matthew T. Mangino is of counsel with Luxenberg, Garbett, Kelly & George P.C. His book The Executioner's Toll, 2010 was released by McFarland Publishing. You can reach him at www.mattmangino.com and follow him on Twitter @MatthewTMangino.

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Baltimore neighborhood experiences decline in homicides amid citywide surge

Last month, as Baltimore breached 300 homicides for the eighth year in a row, the city’s public safety leaders emphasized a bright spot in an otherwise dismal year: a dramatic drop in shootings in one of the most violent parts of town, reported the Baltimore Banner.

The 33 percent reduction in homicides and nonfatal shootings in the Western District follows Mayor Brandon Scott’s revival of a crime prevention approach known as the Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS), an alternative way of policing the city’s most violent offenders. Citing the Western’s improvement, Scott has declared the city’s crime prevention experiment a success and unveiled plans to take it citywide.

But for many, that explanation for such a sudden drop in those crimes has seemed too good to be true. The Baltimore police union and members of the City Council have questioned whether the drop stemmed from population losses, a heavier policing presence in the district or misleading data.

How could the experiment be viewed as a success after yet another year that saw sustained levels of homicides and other nonfatal shootings? In a common refrain, critics questioned whether the strategy had really reduced crime, or merely shifted it from the Western District into other parts of the city. While some of their questions were easily dismissed by available data, others are more difficult to answer.

A Baltimore Banner analysis of 2022 homicides and nonfatal shootings found little evidence to support most critiques. Theories around the so-called “displacement” of crime from one neighborhood to the next, population loss and whether the reduction is significant only in comparison to a 2021 spike are not supported by the available data, the analysis found. Meanwhile, arguments around the distribution of police resources are harder to untangle.

For their part, Baltimore’s mayor and his allies have broadcast their own confidence in the results, and last month staked longer-term hopes in its effectiveness, laying out plans to aggressively scale up GVRS citywide within two years.

Though the Group Violence Reduction Strategy had been tried twice before its current iteration, the approach represents a complex re-envisioning of traditional law enforcement.

Essentially, the strategy focuses on the relatively small number — hundreds — of people responsible for the bulk of violent crime in the city. With this in mind, the approach connects those leading police investigations with groups providing social services to offer law enforcement targets an alternative path out of violence as opposed to incarceration.

Questions around police department resources and Baltimore’s relationship with a key partner loom over the expansion of the strategy, but the blueprint has found success in other places. Cities like Boston and New Orleans have seen steep drops in gang-related violence after adopting similar focused-deterrence models, while criminologists have credited the implementation of a group violence approach in Oakland in 2012 with precipitating consecutive years of shooting declines and the city’s lowest shooting level in almost half a century.

Even in a city with as stubborn a violent crime problem as Baltimore’s, a significant reduction in shootings was what experts studying gun violence expected to happen. University of Pennsylvania researchers tracking Baltimore’s pilot of the strategy say the Western District’s 33% drop in shootings is just a preview of its potential. If Baltimore can faithfully implement the strategy as it expands – a hurdle it has failed to clear in two previous attempts – residents should expect to see a similarly precipitous decline in shootings citywide, they have said.

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Dangerous right-wing militia groups grow in Pennsylvania and across the country

The leader of an armed standoff with federal authorities at an Oregon wildlife refuge and his allies have exploited COVID-19 fears to build a dangerous network of militia members and other far-right factions, according to a new report by two groups that track extremism, reported the Kansas City Star.

Ammon Bundy, who led the 41-day occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in 2016, began building the People’s Rights network in March, says the report by the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights and the Montana Human Rights Network. Since then, the report says, the network has rapidly grown to more than 20,000 members across the country.

Bundy rose to prominence in the so-called “patriot” movement after leading an armed standoff in 2014 at his father’s ranch in Nevada. He and his father, Cliven Bundy, faced federal charges following the confrontation over land grazing fees. The case was dismissed in 2018.

Ammon Bundy did not return a call for comment Wednesday. His father told The Star that “he’s hard to get ahold of a lot of times.”

“I’m not really part of that group,” Cliven Bundy said. “I try to keep up with what’s going on a little bit.”

The network, which the report refers to as “Ammon’s Army,” includes militia members, anti-maskers, conspiracy theorists, preppers and anti-vaxxers. Its rapid growth has been boosted by the joining of Bundy’s far-right paramilitary supporters cultivated from armed standoffs over the years with a large base of new activists radicalized through protests over COVID-19 health directives, the report says.

Bundy has put together a team of 153 “assistants” in 16 states, it says, including Missouri.

 “Since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we’ve documented the division and violence sown by Ammon Bundy and his far-right followers in the Northwest,” said Devin Burghart, president and executive director of IREHR. “To see Ammon’s Army continue to grow and gain a foothold in Missouri is cause for deep concern, for both democracy and public health.”

Despite all the talk of rights and freedom, the report says, “a culture of violence and fear lies at the center of the People’s Rights message.”

“As Bundy told the crowd at the third meeting of the group, if local, state, or federal officials attempt to enforce laws that the group doesn’t like, People’s Rights is prepared to adopt a violent posture. … Already there have been significant clashes and growing rage. In the context of the pandemic, it puts the lives of community members and public servants at risk, straining democratic institutions and damaging civil society.”

The other states in the network, the report says, are Arkansas, California, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Texas, Utah and Washington. Many of the “assistants,” it says, have been involved in extensive far-right activism. And the majority of those in its local leadership positions are women, which the report says is a first for modern far-right networks.

People’s Rights leaders also have proposed armed enclaves in which “righteous” neighbors stand against the “wicked,” the report says.

Bundy’s violence-tinged rhetoric — such as telling followers that they would “be like a den of rattlesnakes” if their rights are threatened — has attracted many militia members, Three Percenters, Oath Keepers and other paramilitary groups, according to the report. People’s Rights leaders have been members in the Southwest Missouri Militia, Montana Militia, Washington State Militia, III% United Patriots and Southern California Patriots, among others, it says.

The People’s Rights network has many similarities to the paramilitary movements of the past, such as the Posse Comitatus — which rose to power during the farm crisis in the 1970s and 1980s — the report says.

Like those in the Posse Comitatus movement, some People’s Rights groups have started sending bogus documents to lawmakers that they claim carry legal weight, it says. A “Petition to Cease and Desist and Demand to Restore the Republic” was recently sent to Idaho legislators calling for an end to the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.

And in Montana, a People’s Rights leader filed a grievance in Montana District Court against Gov. Steve Bullock, claiming he had no authority to issue a stay-at-home directive. The leader also threatened to have the militia “arrest” public officials who enforced stay-at-home orders and offered a $100 bounty for the mayor of Kalispell, Montana’s, address, which he said he needed in order to make a citizen’s arrest.

Another similarity between the People’s Rights network and the Posse Comitatus and militias, the report says, is the abundance of conspiracy theories it perpetuates — though it hasn’t yet come up with its own.

“Rather, the network rests upon a mélange of conspiracy theories brought in by the leadership from various corners of the far-right,” the report says. “Conspiracy theories from QAnon, the John Birch Society, Three Percenters and militia-types, Christian nationalists, and hardcore anti-Semites have circulated throughout the People’s Rights network.”

The name “People’s Rights,” the report says, “is a misnomer of epic proportions.”

“Don’t be fooled. Whatever they choose to call it, it is Ammon’s Army, and it marches to a far-right drumbeat of narcissistic rage and insurrection.”

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Connecticut judge reduces adult's life sentence based on Miller v. Alabama

Latin King Luis Noel Cruz put two bullets into the head of a potential witness, then held down a perceived snitch as a fellow gang-banger fired four shots into him.

A quarter-century later, the pain caused by that double murder hasn’t changed. But something else has: How society sentences the teenagers who perpetrate such crimes.

U.S. District Court Judge Janet Hall, a Clinton appointee, made that difference clear on Tuesday morning as she considered resentencing Cruz, who’d been put away for life without parole for the murders of the two New Haveners, based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent guidance on juvenile offenders, reported the New Haven Independent.

During a three-hour hearing in the Church Street courthouse, Judge Hall recounted Cruz’s childhood on the mean streets of Bridgeport, heard devastating testimony from the victim Tyler White’s New Haven family about how the murders broke them, and questioned a social worker about whether Cruz had truly changed.

Cruz also spoke up for himself.

“I can confidently tell everyone I’m definitely not that stupid, close-minded kid who hurt so many people with my actions,” he said, as he testified that he planned to work with at-risk youth — “the not-yet victims and not-yet offenders” — if the judge would one day release him. “My hope is that will be even the smallest consolation, that others wouldn’t have to go through what I’ve put them through. This is not what I want to be known for, Your Honor.”

Weighing that evidence, Judge Hall ultimately decided to cut Cruz, now 43 years old, a break, dropping his sentence to 35 years in prison.

Judge Hall said Tuesday that she based her decision largely on the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Miller v. Alabama. In that 2012 case, the high court’s justices were deciding whether life in prison without parole was an allowable punishment for a 14-year-old who’d clubbed a man with baseball bat, then burned him alive inside his trailer.

The four liberal justices, joined by swing-vote Anthony Kennedy, ruled that sentence constituted a “cruel and unusual punishment,” in violation of the Eighth Amendment. The four conservative justices disagreed, saying the high court’s job was overstepping its duties in setting a moral standard for the country.

Since then, judges have been interpreting just who counts as a “child,” and Hall has been more willing than others to extend the high court’s reasoning to those who are over 18 years old.

Based on the latest developmental research, experts are suggesting that teenagers might be able to argue that their sentences should be reviewed all the way up to age 24.

While she didn’t want to assign a brightline for adulthood, Hall said she’d consider Cruz, who was just five months past his 18th birthday when he killed White and Diaz, close enough to a juvenile to review his lifetime sentence. She said that also fit with a general trend in sentencing, as only one 18-year-old had been given life in prison without parole in the federal system from 2010 to 2015, according to a U.S. Sentencing Commission report.

Another nearby federal judge, however, a New Yorker presiding over the trials of three murderous gang-bangers from the Bronx who were between 18 and 22 years old, has disagreed, still handing down life without parole to youngsters. That case is currently being challenged before the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.

The lawyers in Hall’s courtroom on Tuesday sparred too, arguing about how much responsibility a young adult should take for their actions, even if the teenage brain isn’t fully developed.

Was Cruz fully culpable at 18 years old when he put a gun against White’s head? Was Cruz fully culpable at 20 years old when he lied about committing the crime at his initial sentencing? Was Cruz fully culpable at 26 years old when he tried to cut ties with the Latin Kings? Was Cruz fully culpable at 43 years old when he still wouldn’t give up a childhood friend who’d been involved in the double murder?

“He was mature enough not to leave a bystander as a witness; so he decided to shoot Tyler White in the head twice,” Patricia Stolfi Collins, an assistant United States attorney, wrote in a brief. “And he was mature enough to know that the business of murder, once begun, should not be left unfinished; and so he helped chase and wrestle down Diaz, as he pled for his life, so that his accomplice could shoot him again and again.”

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Juveniles being used for violent crime because punishment is lenient

Increased instances of juvenile violent crimes reflect an alarming new strategy by Denver street gang leaders to arm young recruits with guns and have them carry out vendettas against rival gangs, including fatal shootings because laws protect juvenile killers from serving lengthy prison terms, reported the Denver Post.

The cycle continues.  As the treatment of juveniles becomes more lenient--the death penalty is gone, mandatory life in prison is gone and states begin reconsider harsh sentences for juveniles--criminal enterprises are back to using juveniles for violent crime.

“Adult and older gang members are becoming more sophisticated. They realize that young members don’t have the same severe consequences as they do. The guns are handed off to the younger kids,” said Kelly Waidler, senior deputy district attorney in Denver District Attorney Beth McCann’s juvenile unit. She formally served in the office’s gang unit.

Teenage killers and robbers adjudicated in juvenile court spend a maximum of five to seven years in a Colorado Division of Youth Services facility depending on their age. It is possible, however, that teens tried in adult court could initially go to youth services and later be transferred to an adult prison to serve out a lengthier sentence, Waidler said.

The rising number of arrests of juveniles for illegal possession of handguns in Denver and an increase in juvenile gun crimes including robbery and homicide may reflect a new strategy of arming younger gang members, said Courtney Johnston, chief deputy attorney in the juvenile unit.

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Former Texas Warden: 'The Convicts Eat Them Alive'

In February prosecutors handed down a rare federal indictment accusing 13 Texas Department of Criminal Justice prison guards of racketeering, reported the Business Insider. The feds said they were cracking down on a Beeville, Texas facility's "culture of corruption" that involved smuggling phones in to members of the Aryan Circle--a rival of the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas implicated in the death of two Texas DAs and the Colorado director of corrections.

One of the former corrections officers, 38-year-old Jaime Jorge Garza, pleaded guilty after getting caught at a checkpoint with four cellphones, pot, and tobacco, the Corpus Christi Caller-Times reported earlier this month. In court, Garza said he got pushed around a lot when he was a corrections officer.

“When I got caught at the checkpoint I was relieved," he said, according to the Caller-Times. "I was glad it was over.”

Former Texas prison warden Terry Pelz told Business Insider that prison gangsters rely on the very people guarding them to facilitate their criminal activities.

Not only is it tempting for low-paid guards to accept bribes in the first place, but it's hard for them to stop doing so because prison gang members might threaten them, says Pelz, who was a warden in an Angleton, Texas prison in the 1980s when the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas started to proliferate.

"Our standards aren't very high for hiring officers," Pelz says. "These youngsters come to work for the penitentiary and the convicts eat them alive."

To read more: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/ex-warden-texas-prison-gangs-192315713.html

Gang Membership on the Rise

The gang problem in the United States is growing and there are an estimated 1.4 million members in some 33,000 gangs, according to the federal government, reported the Associated Press.

Gangs are collaborating with transnational drug trafficking organizations to make more money and are expanding the range of their illicit activities, engaging in mortgage fraud and counterfeiting as well as trafficking in guns and drugs, according to the national gang threat assessment for 2011.

The gang member estimate of 1.4 million was up from 1 million two years ago, a 40 percent increase, but the report attributed the rise in part to improved reporting by law enforcement agencies, reported the Associated Press.

White-collar crime is an increasing focus for gangs. The report cited the arrest of a member in a Los Angeles gang called Florencia 13 for operating a lab that manufactured pirated video games.

Gang membership is increasing most significantly in the Northeast and Southeast regions of the country and many communities are experiencing an increase in ethnic-based gangs such as African, Asian and Caribbean gangs, said the report, which is based on federal, state and local law enforcement data.

To read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/federal-govt-estimates-gang-membership-at-14m-in-33000-gangs-collaboration-by-gangs-rising/2011/10/21/gIQASKzu3L_story.html

Murder Down In Largest Cities

The USA Today recently wrote about the dramatic decline in murder in America's three largest cities. The numbers are incredible when it comes to New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. Homicides in New York have dropped 79% during the past two decades — from 2,245 in 1990 to 471 in 2009, the last full year measured. Chicago is down 46% during that period, from 850 to 458. Los Angeles is down 68%, from 983 to 312.

In 2009, New York had its fewest killings since it began using its current tracking system in 1963. Yet city crime reports through November indicate that homicides have jumped 14.4% and rape is up 15.6% this year, compared with the same period last year. The numbers don't approach those recorded during the 1990s, but are notable in a city that has been a model for reducing crime.

In Los Angeles, authorities have tamped down persistent gang violence. Violent crime was down 11% through November compared with the same period in 2009. But police officials acknowledge that the successes are fragile in a never-ending effort to maintain local public safety even as gang membership has risen slightly, from 43,000 in 2008 to 45,000 this year.

In Chicago, Police Superintendent Jody Weis says the city has struggled to break an unusual cycle of slayings involving child victims. Although the number of homicides has been cut nearly in half since 1990, Weis says the nature of the killings has undermined a public perception of safety citywide.

The USA Today demonstrates that the past is nothing short of spectacular; but, what will the future hold. There is no question that a sagging economy has not pushed economically disenfranchised people to turn to crime as some commentators suggested it would. However, tightening local and state government budgets will reduce police forces, open prison gates and eliminate rehabilitative programming-and will inevitably usher in a new era of rising violence. New York's shrinking police force and it increasing homicide rate may be a harbinger of things to come.

To read more: http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-12-29-1Ahomicide29_CV_N.htm

Maryland Gets First "Gang" Conviction

2007 Law Enhances Penalties for Gang Connection

The Maryland Gang Prosecution Act, enacted in 2007, received its first test in a Maryland courtroom. This week a Baltimore jury convicted Dajuan Marshall of participating in a gang resulting in death along with his conviction for murder and kidnapping.

The gang conviction could add 20 more years to his sentence and a fine of up to $100,000. The law calls for enhanced penalties if prosecutors prove that an underlying crime, such as murder, contributed to a criminal, gang conspiracy.

According to the Baltimore Sun, Marshall killed rival gang members who belonged to a different set of the Bloods. Prosecutors said Marshall "wanted to run the Bloods' gang in Baltimore and saw (one of his victims) as an obstacle."

Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley told the Sun he was proud to have signed the act into law, saying it was "yet another tool for Maryland prosecutors to put individuals who terrorize our neighborhoods behind bars."

To read more: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-gang-conviction-20100809,0,2714594.story