White House officials are defending President Donald Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport suspected gang members, arguing that courts do not have jurisdiction to review his decision.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller defended the administration’s position in a viral CNN interview Monday, clashing with anchor Kasie Hunt over whether Trump was ignoring court rulings.
The argument came after U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, temporarily blocked the administration from enforcing the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan nationals allegedly linked to the Tren de Aragua gang and MS-13. However, by the time the ruling was issued over the weekend, two flights carrying deportees had already left U.S. airspace.
The administration maintains that the president’s actions were lawful and that Boasberg’s order was unenforceable from the start, and Trump is now calling for his impeachment, an aggressive demand given that only one judge has been successfully removed from the bench in U.S. history.
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Miller said Monday on CNN that the Alien Enemies Act gives the president authority that courts don’t have the power to review.
“The president of the United States and his administration reserve all rights under the Constitution to conduct national security operations in defense of the United States,” Miller said.
Stephen Miller on CNN talking about the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
Absolute must-see TV.pic.twitter.com/aDd2jPvkfq
— Geiger Capital (@Geiger_Capital) March 17, 2025
Miller, a key driver of Trump’s immigration policy, argued that the AEA is not subject to judicial review and compared Boasberg’s ruling to a judge attempting to order the movement of U.S. troops overseas.
“You can read the law yourself,” Miller told Hunt. “There’s not one clause in that law that makes it subject to judicial review, let alone district court review.”
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The law, passed by Congress in 1798, gives the president the authority to apprehend, restrain, secure, and remove foreign nationals considered enemies of the U.S. Administration officials argue that TdA qualifies as an enemy force under the law’s provisions.
Although no statutes are technically precluded from judicial review, Miller repeatedly told Hunt that critics of the administration’s actions failed to grapple with the 18th-century law’s plain text.
“When the president is exercising his Article II powers to defend the country against an invasion or to repel a foreign terrorist that is unlawfully in the country, he‘s exercising his core Article II powers as commander in chief,” Miller said.
White House: ‘No court can review this’
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement earlier in the day that the AEA grants the president broad discretion over the removal of foreign nationals deemed security threats.
“Terrorist TdA aliens had already been removed from U.S. territory,” Leavitt said. “And beyond that, federal courts generally have no jurisdiction over the president’s conduct of foreign affairs, his authorities under the Alien Enemies Act, and his core Article II powers to remove foreign alien terrorists from U.S. soil and repel a declared invasion.”
If courts have no jurisdiction, why is a court hearing this case?
The American Civil Liberties Union and other advocacy groups quickly sued the administration, calling the move “unprecedented and lawless.”
“The Trump administration’s intent to use a wartime authority for immigration enforcement is as unprecedented as it is lawless,” said Lee Gelernt, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrant Rights Project.
According to the administration’s reading of the AEA, TdA is an alien enemy force that has come here “at the direction of the Venezuelan government,” as stated in a Saturday proclamation from the White House, which forms the basis for the argument that Trump can unilaterally remove members of the gang under his Article II powers.
“A district court judge can no more enjoin the expulsion of foreign terrorists to foreign soil, than he can direct the movement of Air Force One, than he can direct the movement of an aircraft carrier, than he can direct Marco Rubio to engage in diplomacy,” Miller argued in his fiery interview.
Indeed, the plain text of the statute explicitly states that a mere “proclamation of the event,” which can amount to “any invasion or predatory incursion,” justifies enforcement of the law.
Miller also maintained that courts have jurisdiction over individual plaintiffs who file suits, which he believes should not interfere with the administration’s broader agenda. In this case, there are only five Venezuelan plaintiffs represented by the ACLU.
But despite Miller’s vehement stance, he seemingly danced around whether the deportations were justified through Congress’s Article I powers or whether Article II, the executive branch’s powers, take precedence. In essence, Miller’s argument was somewhat muddled because it is unclear why the administration needs to rely on the 18th-century law if Article II powers grant Trump broad leeway to deport gang members as he sees fit.
The dissonance between whether Trump is relying on Article I or II authority came in addition to a meaningful concession by Miller that Hunt brought up, which is the Supreme Court’s final say on the matter.
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Although Miller believes the high court will eventually side with Trump, he did not deny that the justices would have jurisdiction to weigh the case at hand, which inherently suggests that Article III federal courts do have a say over the law’s interpretations.
“I believe what the Supreme Court will say is what I just said, which is that the president‘s conduct here is not subject to judicial” review, Miller said.