A federal judge in New York on Tuesday indefinitely blocked the Trump Administration from deporting Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.
In his order granting a preliminary injunction enjoining the enforcement of the Alien Enemies Act in his district, Judge Hellerstein said illegal aliens have the same due process rights as American citizens.
“This nation was founded on the “self-evident” truths “that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, [and] that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Declaration of Independence, at ¶ 2 (1776). Our Constitution embodies these truths, in a limited government of enumerated powers, in its system of checks and balances separating the executive, legislative and judicial branches, and in its guarantee that neither citizen nor alien be “deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law,”” Hellerstein wrote in a 22-page order.
Last month US District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, a 91-year-old Clinton appointee, blasted DOJ lawyers during a hearing and accused them throwing people out of the US “because of their tattoos.”
After blocking the removal of two Tren de Aragua gang members in New York last month, Judge Hellerstein on Tuesday issued a preliminary injunction and enjoined enforcement of the Alien Enemies Act in the Southern District of New York.
Judge Hellerstein is the second federal judge to issue an injunction blocking deportations under the Alien Enemies Act.
CNN reported:
Another federal judge has blocked the Trump administration’s use of deportations under the Alien Enemies Act, saying the wartime power shouldn’t be used.
District Judge Alvin Hellerstein said the administration is indefinitely blocked from removing migrants from the Southern District of New York under the act, which gives detainees little due process.
The judge said migrants could still be deported via more traditional immigration authorities.
Hellerstein, in his 22-page opinion Tuesday, wrote that the use of the Alien Enemies Act violates constitutional protections that give people in the US due process.
“Petitioners have not been given notice of what they allegedly did to join (the gang Tren de Aragua), when they joined, and what they did in the United States, or anywhere else, to share or further the illicit objectives of the TdA,” Hellerstein wrote. Yet the Trump administration has used the alleged associations of Venezuelan migrants with Tren de Aragua as a reason to send them to El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison, he noted.
Read the full article here