Donald Trump is planning to take an 18th-century law meant to target wartime aggressors and use it to embark on a massive program of deportations, insiders in his camp have revealed.
The three sources told Rolling Stone his camp is developing “legally dubious justifications” to use the Alien Enemies Act against undocumented immigrants.
The law was introduced in 1798 to target foreign governments' acting against the U.S. during wartime. The lawyer, who has been a frequent adviser to Trump for years, told Rolling Stone the scheming about how to use it against immigrants is “very convoluted and crazy to me.”
He added, “I really don’t know how you get away with this in court.”
The law gives presidents the ability to remove foreign nationals from countries with which the U.S. is at war.
The biggest problem is, the U.S. has not declared war on any of the Latin American countries whose citizens Trump is targeting, Rolling Stone reported.
The report states, “The sources say a second Trump administration would, for instance, argue in court that cartels, gangs, and drug dealers in Latin America have, essentially, co-opted and corrupted their governments to such a degree that the criminals represent effective state actors.
“Trump and his senior officials would present documents and evidence that these foreign nations — including Mexico and El Salvador — have lengthy track records of corrupt high-level government and law-enforcement officials being on the payroll of and working with drug cartels and violent criminal groups.”
ALSO READ: 'You lost Ivanka': Trump the target of bogus political action committees
A Trump government would, effectively, claim that members of cartels and gangs being in the U.S. could be considered an invasion by narco-states.
“I’m pretty skeptical that courts would accept the idea that the current migration conditions would satisfy the requirements of the Alien Enemies Act,” Adam Cox, an immigration expert from NYU School of Law, told Rolling Stone.
“The only times it’s ever been invoked in our history are in cases of actual hostilities with other nations. There’s not really any historical basis for reading this to encompass actions by non-state actors, nor is there any textual basis for doing that.”
Rolling Stone added, “According to the two sources, Trump mentioned that it was important to also use the law to expel their family members and associates and others in their networks who were also non-citizens — even if they weren’t, strictly speaking, ‘cartel members.’”
