In a flourish of unconstitutional acts that have become a hallmark of Trump’s second White House stint, Pam Bondi‘s DOJ sent a memo directing federal law enforcement to “pursue suspected gang members into their homes.” In some cases, as Nick Penzenstadler and Will Carless reported for USA Today, Bondi gave permission to take said action without court-authorized warrants.
The directive, issued March 14 by Pam Bondi, provides the first public view of the specific implementation of the 1798 Alien Enemies Act invoked to deport migrants accused of being members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. A day after that announcement, March 15, immigration officials apprehended and flew more than 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, which has [BECOME KNOWN FOR] harsh and dangerous conditions.
Courtesy of USA Today
Bondi’s missive, obtained by open-government watchdogs Property of the People, expounds on TrumpFile’s initial report detailing Trump’s “proclamation” invoking Alien Enemies Act of 1798, an obscure law that “allows for the immediate deportation of anyone suspected of connections to a terrorist organization.”
Multiple federal judges, including those installed by Trump himself, have ruled emphatically against relying on that law for deportations. According to Politico, U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez, Jr., a Trump appointee, stated recently that Trump “had improperly invoked the law—which affords power to quickly expel nationals of invading countries—to target alleged members of a Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua.”
As Molly Jong Fast explains, exploitation of this obscure law is a core tenet of Heritage Foundation‘s Project 2025, which they all lied about throughout 2024 disavowing connections to it.
AUTHOR FOOTNOTE
Everything Donald does has some sort of (direct or indirect) connection to Heritage’s disgraced manifesto, like: OPM memos authored by Project 2025 figures; and Vought, Carr, and Homan all being documented operatives from Heritage.
After the 2024 Election, they admitted that Project 2025 was their guiding star all along.
But to the point of the memo USA Today obtained, vagueness in the “policy” is the point here. As USA Today reported: “Due to the ‘dynamic nature of law enforcement procedures’ officers are free to ‘apprehend’ ‘aliens’ based on their ‘reasonable belief’ they meet the definitions, the memo states.”
By their very nature, mobsters and their henchfolk do not hold “reasonable beliefs,” so using vague phrasing is an intentional act to help give them contrived latitude for “extra-Constitutional” activities. They have a long history of driving semitrucks through loopholes and norms; relying on an ancient law to “justify” extra-judicial abductions is a stretch even for that lot.
SOURCES
- USA TODAY
- DOJ Memo via Document Cloud
- Property of the People
- Politico
- Molly Jong Fast on Instagram
