from the land-of-the-free,-my-ass dept
USA Today has secured the DOJ’s official rules of engagement for mass deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. (Better yet, it has shared it with everyone, rather than keep it to itself!)
Trump’s resurrection of a law no one thought the Land of the Free would ever use again is disturbing enough. What’s in the memo [PDF], dated March 14, 2025, is just as concerning. This memo was the instigator of long series of horrific events, as Nick Penzenstadler and Will Carless note in their report for USA Today.
The directive, issued by Attorney General Pam Bondi March 14, 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 been criticized for its harsh and dangerous conditions.
All the plans were already in place. All the Trump Administration was waiting for was the starting gun: Bondi’s memo. Since then, hundreds of people have been stripped of their rights and sent straight to a maximum security prison that’s not only in a country they’re not citizens of (the memo targets alleged Venezuelan gang members but sends them to El Salvador), but leverages a law last used to incarcerate thousands of migrants during World War II to free the US government from having to deal with minor irritations like due process.
The memo orders immigration officers (and the hundreds of law enforcement officers, federal and local, that have been deputized or agreed to help the government carry out these heinous deportations) to utilize an extremely questionable checklist to determine who is or isn’t a Tren de Aragua gang member. Chances are, everyone picked up by government agents will somehow manage to rack up enough gang points to justify their extrajudicial rendition. This checklist isn’t here to prevent accidental deportations. It’s there to be pencil-whipped by willing participants in the administration’s racial cleansing program.
But there’s plenty more in this memo that shows the administration cares nothing for the law or the restrictions placed on it by constitutional rights that — whether Trump et al like it or not — are guaranteed to even undocumented immigrants.
First, there’s the DOJ’s explicit blessing of using the ends to justify the means. Agents and assisting law enforcement officers are told they’re more than welcome to arrest first and file the proper paperwork later.
To be clear, as outlined below in the section titled, “Apprehension and Removal Procedures in Reactive Matters,” it is not necessary to complete Forms AEA-21A and AEA-21B prior to apprehending an Alien Enemy, where an officer has a reasonable belief that all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy are met. In such circumstances, officers are authorized to apprehend the Alien Enemy and thereafter complete Forms AEA-21A and AEA-21B.
Form AEA-21A is the “Enemy Validation” form — the bullshit “this is gang member” checklist that pretends pretty much any tattoo is a reference to gang affiliation and that any communication, relationship, or relative proximity to anyone else the government unilaterally declares to be a TdA member is evidence of gang membership.
AEA-21B is the more relevant piece of paper: Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal. In other words, the government can apprehend and move towards removal prior to serving the warrant. Also, this isn’t a real warrant. This is an administrative warrant that is issued by the arresting agent/agency and is completely free of any judicial oversight, even when written up after the fact.
Then there’s this: the Fourth Amendment apparently ceases to exist, according to the DOJ, at least when it comes to arresting people (with or without administrative warrants) under the Alien Enemies Act executive order. (h/t Steve Vladeck on Bluesky)
Given the dynamic nature of enforcement operations, officers in the field are authorized to apprehend aliens upon a reasonable belief that the alien meets all four requirements to be validated as an Alien Enemy. This authority includes entering an Alien Enemy’s residence to make an AEA apprehension where circumstances render it impracticable to first obtain a signed Notice and Warrant of Apprehension and Removal (Form AEA-21B).
That’s absolutely not how the law works. While the Alien Enemies Act pretty much renders due process nonexistent, it does not grant the government the power to enter private residences without a judicial warrant. An administrative warrant (that being one crafted and signed by only the agency performing the arrest) does not grant the authority to enter private areas. The DOJ certainly knows this, and yet AG Bondi seems to think using the phrase “dynamic nature” means every potential arrest now falls under the “exigent circumstances” warrant exception.
The memo claims part of the “dynamic nature” is the possibility that some deportation targets may already have arrest warrants active for other criminal acts. Whether or not this is true, officers still need judicial search warrants to enter people’s homes, even for the purposes of effecting an arrest. There’s simply no exclusion in the Alien Enemies Act that justifies warrantless searches.
Of course, the DOJ knows it should be able to get away with this, at least for the short term. Once due process is stripped, it’s impossible to challenge the lack of a valid search warrant, just as it’s impossible to challenge the arrest itself. Invoking rights does no good when the government is determined to ignore them. Yet again, the Trump Administration is demonstrating it cares more about aiding and abetting bigotry than respecting the rule of law.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, cecot, dhs, doj, donald trump, due process, immigration, kristi noem, mass deportations, tda
