Excerpt:
“1. Plaintiffs-Petitioners (‘Plaintiffs’) are Venezuelan men in immigration custody threatened with imminent removal under the President’s expected Proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act (‘AEA’), a wartime measure that has been used only three times in our Nation’s history: the War of 1812, World War 1 and World War II.
2. The Proclamation is expected to authorize ‘immediate’ removal of noncitizens that the Proclamation deems to be alien enemies, without any opportunity for judicial review. It also contorts the plain language of the AEA: arrivals of noncitizens from Venezuela are deemed an ‘invasion’ or ‘predatory incursion’ by a ‘foreign nation or government,’ where Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, is deemed to be sufficiently akin to a foreign nation or government.
3. But the AEA has only ever been a power invoked in time of war, and plainly only applies to warlike actions: it cannot be used here against nationals of a country—Venezuela— with whom the United States is not at war, which is not invading the United States, and which has not launched a predatory incursion into the United States.”
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