A judge of the Court of Appeals that reviews the blockade of the Law of Foreign Enemies in the United States considered on Monday, March 24 that this country treated Nazis expelled during World War II than the almost 200 Venezuelans for recently deported to El Salvador based on said rule.
“The Nazis obtained better treatment under the Lee (Law of Foreign Enemies),” said Karen Henderson, one of the three magistrates that make up the panel that must rule on the appeal presented by the US government against the temporary blockade of the aforementioned law, ordered by federal judge James Boasberg, of the Columbia district.
“We question the Nazi analogy,” replied the vice -fiscal general Drew Ensign, who argued during the oral hearing that Boasberg’s resolution constitutes “a huge and unprecedented intrusion” in the national immigration and security policies of President Donald Trump. Henderson replied that Trump’s decision to invoke the law is “something unprecedented.”
The president has affirmed that the Transnational Criminal Band of Aragua (ADD) is invading the country and invoked the Law of Foreign Enemies on March 15, a norm of 1798 that allows foreigners to be expelled without a previous judicial view.
Its objective was to accelerate the deportations of Venezuelans to El Salvador, a country that has agreed to imprison them at the Center for Confinement of Terrorism (CECOT).
From that same March 15, Boasberg maintains the application of said law, which has led the government to appeal it, and Trump himself and members of his cabinet to ask for his dismissal, questioning the separation of powers in the United States.
In the absence of the pronouncement of the three judges of the Court on the appeal, Henderson said that the Government did not give opportunity to the deported Venezuelans to even prove that they are not members of TDA and “hurriedly put them into airplanes destined for El Salvador”. In that sense, he considered that the temporary blocking order issued by Boasberg seems to make sense.
“If the government defends this, you can get me into a plane and expel me saying that I am from ADD,” he added.
For his part, Lee Gellnt, one of the lawyers who filed the collective claim against the implementation of the Law of Foreign Enemies before the Federal Court, said before the Court of Appeals that the Government is using “a shortcut” to achieve summary deportations of immigrants.
He also indicated that they will eventually demonstrate that everyone, or at least most, of Venezuelans sent to El Salvador are not members of TDA, and that this criminal group does not really have “a hierarchical structure” nor has it activated an invasion of the United States, as the government maintains.