An arcane wartime law President Donald Trump recently invoked to carry out the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members could open the door for federal agents to enter residences without a warrant, according to the New York Times.
Trump last week signed a proclamation ushering in the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as he took aim at Venezuelan citizens the administration branded as belonging to the notorious Tres de Aragua gang.
But a reading of the language by senior Justice Department lawyers, together with the historical context of the law, has led the Trump administration to believe “that the government does not need a warrant to enter a home or premises to search for people believed to be members of that gang,” the Times reported Thursday.
“It remains unclear whether the administration will apply the law in this way, but experts say such an interpretation would infringe on basic civil liberties and raise the potential for misuse,” according to the Times report. “Warrantless entries have some precedent in America’s wartime history, but invoking the law in peacetime to pursue undocumented immigrants in such a way would be an entirely new application.”
The legal view sent experts into panic mode over concerns that constitutional freedoms, including the the Fourth Amendment’s requirement for a court order to search someone’s home, could be at risk.
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“The Fourth Amendment applies to everyone in the U.S., not just individuals with legal status,” Christopher A. Wellborn, the president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told the Times. "Ripping that right away from Americans would be an “abuse of power that destroys our privacy, making Americans feel unsafe and vulnerable in the places where our children play and our loved ones sleep."
The law has been used on just three other occasions, all in times of “major wars,” and it remains to be seen “how the administration has deemed someone a member of Tren de Aragua,” the report stated.
But the ramifications are clear.
“Legal scholars have long criticized the law as prone to abuse,” the Times reported Thursday. “During World War II, in one of the darker chapters in the nation’s history, the law paved the way for citizens of Germany, Italy or Japan to be searched and detained.”
Vanderbilt University law professor Christopher Slobogin told the Times that the old law invoked by Trump “undermines fundamental protections that are recognized in the Fourth Amendment, and in the due process clause.”
