Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar (Minn.) and fellow traveler Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) held a press conference Thursday both to remind Americans that not everything woke in the federal government can be jettisoned through executive action and to advocate for the termination of President Donald Trump’s authority to deport the citizens of an enemy nation.
When explaining why Congress should pass her bill repealing the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 — which Trump indicated would play a role in his crackdown on illegal immigration — Omar apparently identified who would benefit: criminals.
Glossing over illegal aliens’ de facto violation of U.S. immigration law and evident contempt for American sovereignty, Omar claimed that they will not be kicked out of the country “because of anything they have done” but “because where they are from.”
“The Trump administration’s immigration policy is a threat to immigrants like criminals,” said Omar. “America is too great to fall prey to Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant agenda.”
To keep criminals and potential enemies inside the U.S., Omar and Hirono have reintroduced the so-called “Neighbors Not Enemies Act,” with the help of Massachusetts Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D), legislation that would have, for instance, barred Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman from deporting German citizens during World War II, referred to by Omar as “world war eleven” during the press conference.
‘A president simply saying that the country is invaded by a foreign nation is sufficient and is not subject to judicial review.’
An early 20th-century supplemental brief filed in support of the plenary power of Congress over alien enemies and the constitutionality of the Alien Enemies Act noted that the law was passed when the U.S. was on the verge of war with France.
In the initial debate over the proposed law, some lawmakers raised the concern that there were persons “who have not only been extremely instrumental in fomenting hostilities against this country, but also in alienating the affections of our own citizens.” It was apparently men of this description — those who could engage in espionage and sabotage in wartime — that President John Adams wanted to send packing, posthaste.
Apparently, the first cases that arose under the statute occurred during the War of 1812 after President James Madison invoked the act against British nationals. According to the supplementary brief, these cases contained “no expression of doubt by the courts as to [the law’s] constitutionality.”
The U.S. Supreme Court later confirmed in its 1948 Ludecke v. Watkins ruling that the law does not violate the Bill of Rights or the U.S. Constitution.
During World War II, it was used to place restrictions on German, Italian, and Japanese nationals living in the United States. According to the National Archives, “of those interned, there was evidence that some had pro-Axis sympathies.” The American citizens who joined them in internment did so voluntarily.
By the war’s end, over 31,000 suspected enemy aliens and their families had been interned at Immigration and Naturalization Services camps and military facilities across the country. NewsNation noted that most of the over 100,000 American residents of Japanese descent detained in internment camps were not held under the Alien Enemies Act but on different grounds.
The Brennan Center noted that the president can invoke the Alien Enemies Act either in times of “declared war” or when a foreign nation threatens or undertakes an invasion against American territory.
Daniel Tichenor, a political science professor at the University of Oregon, noted last month that while Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act would likely trigger numerous court battles, courts may ultimately choose “not to intervene on the grounds that a president simply saying that the country is invaded by a foreign nation is sufficient and is not subject to judicial review. This possibility makes it impossible to automatically dismiss blueprints for using an 18th-century law, however dubious.”
In other words, Trump might be able to successfully utilize the late Federalist Party’s law to oust suspected enemy aliens and other criminals, upsetting Omar in the process.
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Immigration, Illegal immigration, Ilhan omar, Omar, Leftism, Ayanna pressley, Radicals, Open borders, Democrats, Enemies act, Enemy aliens, Politics
