Trump to Invoke Wartime Law Allowing Him to Deport Foreigners Without Cause

Donald Trump is preparing to invoke a wartime authority which would allow him to deport foreigners without cause by labelling them “alien enemies”.

According to CNN, the president is poised to use the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a sweeping wartime law that would allow him to detain and deport members of a perceived enemy nation.

The power would likely pave the way for quicker removals of certain immigrants and speed up Mr Trump’s mass deportation pledge.

The announcement, which could be made as soon as tomorrow, will reportedly come in the form of a presidential proclamation.

During his campaign for re-election, Mr Trump pledged to launch “Operation Aurora”, named after the Colorado town said to be taken over by Venezuelan gangs, to target undocumented migrant members.

“I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil,” Mr Trump said during a rally in California last year.

The act has been used just three times in American history, all in connection with major military conflicts.

It allows the president to detain or deport non-citizens from a country considered an enemy at war with the US.

Woodrow Wilson, the former president, invoked the act during the First World War to place over 6,000 “enemy aliens”, many of them Germans, in internment camps.

Most recently, it was used by former president Franklin Roosevelt in wake of Pearl Harbor to designate Japanese, German and Italian nationals as “alien enemies” during the Second World War.

While it would be legally challenging to enact given the United States has not declared a war with another country, a broad interpretation of the act could allow a president to target immigrants from nations deemed hostile to US interests.

In February, Mr Trump said steep tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China were necessary to address a “national emergency” “gang members, smugglers, human traffickers, and illegal drugs and narcotics of all kinds” arriving into the US.

The US also designated Latin American criminal and drug-trafficking groups as “global terrorist organisations”.

It followed Donald Trump’s executive order which declared a national emergency on the southern border to stop “dangerous gangs like the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua to take over and terrorise entire American cities”.

“Labeling Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organisation was the first step,” a senior White House official told CNN last month.

In his inaugural address, the president reiterated his plan to invoke the 18th century law as part of his crackdown on immigration.