Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs A federal appeals court in Washington on Wednesday kept in place, for now, a block on the Trump administration’s use of a rarely invoked wartime statute to summarily deport Venezuelan migrants accused of being members of a violent street gang.By a 2-to-1 vote, a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit said the Venezuelan migrants were likely to succeed in their claims that the government cannot use the wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to summarily transfer them to a prison in El Salvador without a hearing.“The government’s removal scheme denies plaintiffs even a gossamer thread of due process, even though the government acknowledges their right to judicial review of their removability,” Judge Patricia A. Millett wrote.The decision dealt a blow to the Trump administration’s efforts to advance its immigration agenda through the wartime act, but the underlying order will run out in days anyway. Additional proceedings over whether to issue a longer-running injunction are likely to go back before Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge in Federal District Court in Washington.In mid-March, Judge Boasberg issued a restraining order barring the Trump administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to summarily remove Venezuelans it says belong to the gang Tren de Aragua. His order does not prohibit the government from detaining such men, or from deporting them after hearings under normal immigration law.In a related dispute, Judge Boasberg is also trying to determine if the Justice Department violated his court order by completing the transfer of two planeloads of Venezuelans who were en route to El Salvador at the time he issued it. The government has argued that it did not violate his order because the planes were already outside U.S. airspace when he issued it.A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union who is representing the Venezuelan migrants, Lee Gelernt, praised the appeals court for maintaining the restraining order, which will prevent further such transfers for now.“The court properly recognized the gravity of the issues and need for further proceedings before more individuals are sent to a notorious Salvadoran prison, perhaps for the rest of their lives,” he said.The case has emerged in recent days as a flashpoint over the Trump administration’s use of a 227-year-old law that had been invoked only three times in American history, all during periods of declared war, to pursue its peacetime agenda of mass deportations.Administration officials have repeatedly stonewalled Judge Boasberg’s attempts to get more information about the two planes that continued on to El Salvador. President Trump and his allies have also expressed outrage at Judge Boasberg’s order, portraying it as an illegitimate intrusion into the executive branch’s national security powers. Mr. Trump has called for him to be impeached.The appellate panel’s ruling, however, largely ignored such aspects of the confrontation, focusing on the narrower issue of whether the restraining order was legitimate.Judge Karen L. Henderson, an appointee of the President George H.W. Bush, said that at this early stage it appeared unlikely that the Alien Enemies Act could be applied in the way the Trump administration was trying to use it. She also rejected the government’s claim that the matter falls beyond the powers of the judicial branch because it touches foreign relations“Sensitive subject matter alone does not shroud a law from the judicial eye,” she wrote, adding, “Indeed, we have previously considered the precise sort of question that the government contends we cannot.”Judge Millett, an appointee of President Barack Obama, agreed with Judge Henderson but wrote separately. Her opinion focused more on the due-process rights of people Trump administration officials have accused of being members of Tren de Aragua, which the White House recently designated a terrorist organization.Judge Millett’s opinion also said the government would not be harmed by briefly pausing the use of the Alien Enemies Act as Judge Boasberg more thoroughly evaluated the facts and the law.“The district court has been handling this matter with great expedition and circumspection, and its orders do nothing more than freeze the status quo until weighty and unprecedented legal issues can be addressed,” she wrote.The panel’s third judge, Justin Walker, a Trump appointee, dissented. He thought the case should not have been brought in Washington, but rather in Texas, where the five Venezuelan migrants who filed the initial complaint are being held. Judge Walker also gave greater credence to the Trump administration’s claim that Judge Boasberg’s original order could harm diplomatic negotiations on a national security matter.“The district court here in Washington, D.C. — 1,475 miles from the El Valle Detention Facility in Raymondville, Texas — is not the right court to hear the plaintiffs’ claims,” he wrote. “The government likely faces irreparable harm to ongoing, highly sensitive international diplomacy and national-security operations.”The Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798 as the newly founded United States feared a war with France, allows the executive branch to remove citizens of a foreign country whose government is in a declared war with the United States, or is otherwise invading or engaged in a “predatory incursion” of American territory. In his proclamation invoking the statute, Mr. Trump said that Tren de Aragua fit the last two criteria.But Judge Henderson cast doubt on that assertion. She wrote that, at the moment, it appeared that “invasion” or “predatory incursion” meant a form of attack or hostilities, noting that “migration alone did not suffice.” Still, she cautioned that the government would have an opportunity to make the case that the gang fits the criteria under the law.In issuing his order, Mr. Trump also asserted that members of Tren de Aragua had not left Venezuela solely on their own volition, but were acting at the clandestine direction of the Venezuelan government because its autocratic leader, Nicolas Maduro, wants to destabilize the United States.Last month, however, U.S. intelligence agencies circulated an assessment that reached the opposite conclusion. It found that the gang was not under the control of the Venezuelan government or acting at its direction, and lacks the centralized command-and-control organization to follow any orders if they existed, officials have said.
