Judge bars deportation under Alien Enemies Act, says constitutional protections are what make 'America great' [View all]
Source: Law & Crime
May 21st, 2025, 7:19 pm
A Georgia judge on Wednesday barred the Trump administration from deporting a Venezuelan immigrant using the Alien Enemies Act (AEA). In a 15-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Clay Land, a George W. Bush appointee, frames the case as part of an ongoing political clash as President Donald Trump moves to “reverse the immigration policies” of Joe Biden, with courts “thrust into the middle of the controversy.”
The judge says his work is to decide any given case on the merits of that case alone, and here he finds the government’s position lacking. “(I)t is difficult sometimes to separate the policy issues from the legal ones in these cases,” Land’s opinion reads. “But the courts’ job (solemn duty) is to carefully make that discernment and base decisions on a good faith interpretation of the law and not immigration public policy considerations.”
In the case, stylized as Y.A.P.A. v. Trump, the plaintiff filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus as a lone litigant in order to “preemptively prevent his transfer” to a notorious prison in El Salvador known as the Center for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT), the judge explains. The plaintiff alleges the government is likely to try and have him summarily deported under the auspices of the AEA. This claim, the court notes, is based on Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) telling an immigration court the detainee “is a known associate of” Tren de Aragua (TdA), the transnational Venezuelan gang cited in Trump’s invocation of the 18th-century wartime law.
The government, for its part, insisted the plaintiff does not have standing to file his habeas petition because he has not even been “designated an alien enemy” under the AEA. The judge rejected that argument, based on a series of U.S. Supreme Court rulings about due process required under the obscure statute.
Read more: https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/unrestrained-zeal-does-not-include-gaming-the-system-judge-bars-deportation-under-alien-enemies-act-says-constitutional-protections-are-what-make-america-great/
Full headline: ‘Unrestrained zeal does not include gaming the system’: Judge bars deportation under Alien Enemies Act, says constitutional protections are what make ‘America great’
Link to ORDER (PDF viewer) - https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25950897-yapa-v-trump-order/
Link to ORDER (PDF) - https://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/25950897/yapa-v-trump-order.pdf
I was looking up this judge and found this blast from the past - Judge Clay Land v. Orly Taitz, Part II
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