March 17, 2025

By Elie Honig

Photo: El Salvador Presidency / Handout/Anadolu/Getty Images

The Trump administration has stepped right up to the line of intentional defiance of a judicial order, perhaps even over it.

We should know in the hours and days ahead whether we have arrived at a legitimate constitutional crossroads — that’ll depend on the details — or whether the administration has adopted a posture of semi-intentional, self-serving recklessness toward the courts. Either way, we’ve got a problem.

On Saturday, federal immigration authorities arrested over 200 alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA), based on a 1798 law called the Alien Enemies Act. That law gives the president broad authority to deport noncitizens under two circumstances. First, the law applies when there is a declared war between the United States and a foreign country (obviously inapplicable here). Second, the Act allows deportation in the case of an “invasion or predatory incursion” into the United States by “any foreign nation or government.”

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