Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) said Thursday on CNN’s “The Arena” that the Trump administration was abusing the Alien Enemies Act for deportations.
Host Kasie Hunt said, “There also was a ruling today from a federal judge, a Trump-appointed judge, actually, that the use of the Alien Enemies Act to deport people from Venezuela, who the administration alleges to be part of a gang, is not allowed. What was your reaction to that?”
Van Hollen said, “It’s a total abuse of The Alien Enemies Act to claim that what we’re experiencing here in the country is an invasion, like from a foreign government. This was a judge who just looked at the facts and said, no, you can’t do that. Look, the Trump administration is trying to dredge up these old laws and misapply them across the board.”
He added, “I mean, they’ve also done the same thing in these cases where they’re detaining students for their speech. It’s not a question of whether you like their speech or don’t like their speech. They have a right to free speech. And the Rubio has dredged up this McCarthy era law, The McCarran-Walter Act, trying to claim that these students exercising their speech is somehow a threat to U.S. foreign policy. It’s clearly a ruse simply to squash their free speech rights. So no matter where you look, this administration is violating statutes and the Constitution, including, by the way, when it comes to tariffs, abusing their authority under The Emergency Economic Powers Act to do things they’re not legally empowered to do.”
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