According to the ‘Alien Enemies Act,’ non-citizens may be “apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.”
QUICK FACTS:
- During a campaign stop in Dubuque, Iowa, Donald Trump promised to draw upon the ‘Alien Enemies Act’ to tackle the illegal immigration crisis.
- Trump told the audience he would “invoke immediately the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known or suspected gang members” as well as “drug dealers” and “cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of illegal alien gang violence once and for all.”
- “We will destroy the cartels including by deploying U.S. Navy to impose a full naval embargo to close the waters of our region because the land will be closed up,” he explained, noting that he would also reinstate the travel ban from his first presidential term, while also expanding it to “deny entry to all communists and Marxists to the United States.”
- “Under Crooked Joe, lawless mobs of unscreened, unvetted illegal alien migrants are stampeding across our border by the millions and millions, including hoards of criminals, terrorists, human traffickers, child smugglers, gang members, and inmates emptied out of their prisons, insane asylums and mental institutions,” Trump said. “This is an invasion and I’m the one candidate who from day one knows exactly how to stop it.”
President Trump will invoke the Alien Enemies Act to remove all known and suspected cartel members from the United States, and deploy the U.S. Navy to impose a full naval embargo on the cartels! pic.twitter.com/2AgAp9AhmB
— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) June 25, 2023
THE ALIEN ENEMIES ACT:
- The Alien Enemies Act was part of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, invoked during World War II by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
- The act reads, “Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted or threatened against the territory of the United States, non-citizens may be ‘apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies.”
- At the time, Roosevelt used the law to detain Japanese nationals in internment camps.
- Democrats have attempted to repeal the act.
- Representative Ilhan Omar (D-MN) said the Alien Enemies Act was “xenophobic” and introduced the Neighbors Not Enemies Act in 2020.
BACKGROUND:
- Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R) said the ongoing crisis at the U.S.-Mexico southern border is an “invasion.”
- “I officially declared an invasion at our border because of Biden’s policies,” the governor tweeted.
- The governor then announced a deployment of the Texas National Guard, the Texas Department of Public Safety, and local law enforcement to combat the issue.
