Trump Set to Invoke ‘Alien Enemies Act’ to Deal with Migrant Invasion, Drug Cartels

In one of his first acts as president, Donald Trump is set to invoke the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) of 1798 as his chief tool to confront the invasion of illegal migrants and the crimes committed by the Mexican drug cartels.

Trump also stated that he will designate the drug cartels as terrorist organizations in conjunction with invoking the AEA.

“Under the orders I sign today, we will also be designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations,” Trump said in a statement. “And by invoking the alien enemies act of 1798 I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks bringing devastating crime to US soil, including our cities and inner cities.”

Trump’s use of the act will be novel in that the U.S. is not technically “at war” with the cartels and the invasion of illegal migrants. But citing it to form the basis of his actions to secure the southern border would serve to lend his actions a legality that will not be so easily defeated by activists for lawbreaking illegals and the lawsuits they will file in the coming weeks and months.

The president’s suggestion of using the AEA is not a sudden development. He had made mention of the idea at several of his rallies during the 2024 campaign. For instance, at an October rally in Coachella, California, he said, “I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil.”

The Republican Party also cited the act in its official 2024 platform in which the GOP said it should be used as the basis to “remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of Illegal Alien gang violence once and for all.”

The Alien Enemies Act was first enacted in 1798 by President John Adams when the federal government became fearful that a war entangling France in violence would spill over into the USA. Since its introduction, it has only been used three times, each during a time of war. The first instance was to root out enemies during the War of 1812, next it was invoked during World War One and then also during World War Two.

The act was part of the controversial “Alien and Sedition Acts,” which caused a major split between the founders and their then still forming political parties. The AEA, though, was not the segment of the total legislation that was disputed by those early leaders. Indeed, most agreed with the purpose of the AEA.

The AEA allows a president to detain, relocate, or expel non-citizens if they are from a country that is an avowed enemy of the U.S.:

Whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government … and the President of the United States shall make public proclamation of the event, all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government, being males of the age of fourteen years and upwards, who shall be within the United States, and not actually naturalized, shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured and removed, as alien enemies.

The political uproar the Sedition Acts raised cleaved Vice President Thomas Jefferson from his president, John Adams, and once Jefferson became our third president in 1800, he allowed most of the Sedition Act to expire. However, showing that both Adams’ Federalists and Jefferson’s Democratic-Republicans supported it, Jefferson did not sunset or invalidate the AEA and he allowed it to stand as the law of the land.

The act was used in World War One to detain Germans and in World War Two to detain Italians and Germans, but was not generally used to detain Japanese Americans. Executive Order 9066 was used for the latter actions.

The act has been upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court every time it was challenged, so it has a solid history of passing constitutional muster.

The Center for Immigration Studies also suggested back in 2023 that the president could also use this act to expel any of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese nationals who live in the U.S. in light of the constantly belligerent actions taken by the Red Chinese government.

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