A federal judge tore into his colleagues for blocking President Donald Trump’s use of a wartime authority to arrest and deport Venezuelan gangbangers in a scathing dissent.
A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was not intended to be used on crime syndicates such as the Venezuelan-based Tren de Aragua gang, according to court documents. Two judges on the panel — one appointed by President George W. Bush and another by President Joe Biden — stated that Trump’s allegations about Tren de Aragua did not meet the scale of national conflict that Congress intended for the law.
However, Judge Andrew Oldham, the third judge on the panel, “emphatically” disagreed and issued a scathing rebuke of the majority opinion’s findings.
“The majority’s approach to this case is not only unprecedented — it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent,” wrote Oldham, a Trump appointee, in a dissenting opinion.
“It reflects a view of the Judicial power that is not only muscular — it is herculean,” Oldham continued. “And it reflects a view of the Executive power that is not only diminutive — it is made subservient to the foreign-policy and public-safety hunches of every federal district judge in the country.”
The White House, which praised, Oldham’s dissent, indicated it would take the fight to a higher court.
“The authority to conduct national security operations in defense of the United States and to remove terrorists from the United States rests solely with the President,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson stated to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“President Trump exercised this lawful authority and employed the Alien Enemies Act to remove enemies of the United States, including vicious [Tren de Aragua] gang members, from the country,” Jackson continued. “Judge Oldham’s dissent provides a careful review of this authority, and we expect to be vindicated on the merits in this case.”
First established as a Venezuelan prison gang in 2013, Tren de Aragua has swelled into an international crime syndicate over the years with up to 5,000 members around the world. The ruthless gang has since made a presence within the U.S., with confirmed activity in at least 15 states — prompting the president to sign an executive order designating Tren de Aragua and other high-profile Latin American gangs as foreign terrorist organizations, opening up more federal enforcement resources to dismantle their operations.
Roughly eight million Venezuelan nationals fled their home country under President Nicolas Maduro, a leftist autocratic leader who has overseen rampant inflation and economic turmoil. A number of these migrants ended up making their way to the U.S., largely by taking advantage of the Biden-era border crisis illegally entering the country, Customs and Border Protection data show, and thousands of others were paroled into the country through President Joe Biden’s CHNV program.
Some of the Venezuelans who reached American soil have included members of the heinous gang, arrest reports and other government documentation confirm. A Department of Homeland Security report leaked in October 2024 indicated that more than 600 foreign nationals residing in the U.S. may have ties to Tren de Aragua.
These Venezuelan gangbangers have been accused of deadly shootings and numerous other heinous crimes within the country, including the takeover of an entire apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado in 2024.
Upon re-entering office in January, Trump got to work on securing the U.S.-Mexico border and specifically targeted Tren de Aragua. In March, Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, allowing for the “immediate” apprehension, detention and removal of these Venezuelan gangbangers.
On Tuesday, the Trump administration escalated its war effort against the Venezuelan gang by launching an airstrike on a Tren de Aragua vessel transporting drugs in the Caribbean, killing 11 members on board. The airstrike marks the first major unilateral military action taken against the cartels since Trump entered office.
Opponents of Trump’s immigration enforcement agents have since vehemently used the judicial system to block his use of the authority. The fight went all the way to the Supreme Court, with the nation’s most powerful court in April allowing the White House to deport Venezuelan gangsters under the Alien Enemies Act, but only on a temporary basis.
While the ruling freezes Trump’s ability to quickly detain and deport Venezuelan gangbangers for now, the issue could end up being litigated in the Supreme Court.
“For 227 years, every President of every political party has enjoyed the same broad powers to repel threats to our Nation under the Alien Enemies Act,” Oldham said in his dissent. “And from the dawn of our Nation until President Trump took office a second time, courts have never second-guessed the President’s invocation of that Act.”
“For President Trump, however, the rules are different,” Oldham continued. “Rather, President Trump must plead sufficient facts — as if he were some run-of-the-mill plaintiff in a breach-of-contract case — to convince a federal judge that he is entitled to relief. That contravenes over 200 years of legal precedent. And it transmogrifies the least-dangerous branch into robed crusaders who get to playact as multitudinous Commanders in Chief.”
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