Finally. Due process for the Trump administration's immigrant detainees has been the single most important issue for the courts to address. While it was a relief that the Supreme Court weighed in with an order that all detainees must be allowed the right of habeas corpus, until this week, no judge had ruled on the underlying applicability at the heart of the policy: Trump's invocation of the 1789 Alien Enemies Act. On Thursday, a Trump-appointed judge ordered all deportations in his district to stop. Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a federal judge in Texas and member of the Federalist Society, ruled that it's ridiculous to define the presence of Venezuelan gang members in the country as an “invasion” or “predatory incursion."
The judge admitted that he could not question the administration's contention that the Tren de Aragua gang is operating at the direction of the Venezuelan government (Trump's own intelligence community disputes this claim), so Rodriguez made the effort to delve into the archives to find how the law was meant to apply:
