Our Fifth Circuit Alien Enemies Act Amicus Brief
Today, in the Fifth Circuit case of W.M.M. v. Trump, we submitted an amicus brief opposing the Trump Administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as a tool for peacetime detention and deportation of immigrants. The brief was filed on behalf of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU, the Cato Institute, prominent law-of-war scholar Prof. John Dehn, and myself. I coauthored it with Brennan Center attorneys Katherine Yon Ebright and Leah Tulin, with the aid of valuable advice from Elizabeth Goitein (Brennan Center), and Prof. Dehn. Katherine is a leading expert on the AEA and its history, and Liza one of the nation’ leading experts on emergency powers.
The fact that this brief is backed by organizations as ideologically diverse as Cato and the Brennan Center is a testament to the egregious nature of Trump’s invocation of the AEA.
The brief is posted here.
Here is a summary of the brief I prepared for the Cato Institute website:
The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 (AEA) is a wartime authority. Congress enacted the AEA under its constitutional war powers as an implementation of the law of war, which in 1798 allowed the government to detain or expel supposed “alien enemies.” The AEA may be invoked only in the
Article from Reason.com
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