President Donald Trump’s administration suffered another legal setback this week after a federal appeals court blocked its attempt to deport alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, rejecting key arguments made under the Alien Enemies Act.
CNN legal analyst Elie Honig broke down the ruling on Wednesday, highlighting “two big takeaways from the ruling” after a three-judge panel in Washington, D.C., declined to lift an emergency order that halted deportation flights of suspected members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang.
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Honig explained that the Trump administration had argued the judiciary had no authority to interfere with the president’s immigration decisions, particularly when grounded in national security concerns, told ABC News.
“First of all, one of the arguments that the Trump administration was making, and we’ve heard them say this publicly, is ‘this court has no jurisdiction to even get involved in this case… they cannot second-guess anything the president does on these immigration matters,’” Honig said.
“Well, all the judges here, all three of them, reject that premise. They say, ‘we can get involved here. We can have the power to make a judicial decision, and we will do that.” The court’s 2-1 decision upheld the lower court’s emergency injunction blocking the deportation flights, delivering a legal blow to Trump’s controversial application of the Alien Enemies Act.
Honig, a former federal prosecutor, emphasized the importance of the second takeaway from the ruling. “This was a split 2 to 1, and the thing that ultimately the administration, the Trump administration, has to prove here and that they allege, is that this was an invasion, or a predatory incursion made by a foreign government,” he explained.
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“Now, I’ve said before on the air, all of those terms sound like real stretches as applied here, and there’s a whole section of the opinion where the court sort of dissects those meticulously.” While the ruling is not yet final, the majority of the judges signaled skepticism about the administration’s framing of the case.
Honig added that the court’s opinion made clear the judges believe “based on what we have in front of us, that is a real stretch to apply those terms, and we don’t think those terms are ultimately going to apply to this situation here.” The ruling signals ongoing legal hurdles for the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, particularly as it seeks to stretch existing laws in unprecedented ways.
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