Virginia did not support Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election, but its attorney general is supporting him now.
AG Jason Miyares and South Carolina AG Alan Wilson are the primary signatories among 26 mostly red state attorneys general this week to write an amicus brief encouraging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to reverse District Court Judge James Boasberg's order blocking the deportations of members of violent gangs Tren de Aragua and MS-13.
They are also asking that the deportations be allowed to stand during the appeals process.
In response to a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union and leftist legal advocacy group Democracy Forward, Boasberg issued a restraining order to prevent the deportations.
The lawsuit challenged the administration's authority to deport under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act because the U.S., the groups say, is not amid a "declared war."
The Trump administration, however, denied Boasberg's verbal order to return any planes carrying deportees to the United States because they were already in international air space.
The Tren de Aragua threat
The AGs believe the gang members – with a lengthy list of dangerous activities – are threats to their states.
"The Democrats somehow say that a terrorist organization that is committing crimes against the people of this country – engaging in drug trafficking, human trafficking, and authorizing violence against law enforcement – that somehow or another, we want to stop the Trump administration from removing these individuals from our country," Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall told Washington Watch Thursday.
He said this type of crime is a national security issue, not a red state issue.
"This is a violent, extremist gang," he asserted. "It has been identified as a foreign terrorist organization; there is a direct proclamation from the president identifying the harm that they can cause on the American people. There is no dispute that they came into this country unlawfully for a bad purpose with a direct connection to the leadership of the Venezuelan government."
The next step is the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and though the case's fate is questionable there, Marshall believes the Trump administration will ultimately prevail.
"I can definitely see it in the Supreme Court," he said.
The larger issue in play is whether a district court judge has the authority to shut down executive policy at a nationwide level.
"We've already seen the [Supreme] Court very much opposed, at least some of the conservative members, opposed to this power being vested in a singular district judge," Marshall noted. "It's the mechanism in which Democrats were able to hamper the Trump administration during their prior tenure and one that I hope the court will weigh in on."
He also believes the unity among Republican state attorneys general makes an impact. He pointed to the group's efforts against the Biden administration's attempted re-write of Title IX, the landmark women's rights legislation, to include gender identity.
"We did that in individual cases with individual states suing, not with one judge stopping the entire nation with one stroke of a pen," Marshall said.
The admin's case for deportation
Counter to the ACLU's claim, Marshall assured show host Jody Hice the Alien Enemies Act clearly empowers Trump's plan.
Though there is not presently a "declared war," the act's language still allows the president to act against people who are intent on acts of harm against the U.S.
"This president, under the Constitution as well as under the Alien Enemies Act, has the ability to remove individuals that have invaded this country to conduct bad operations, and that's exactly what this gang is doing," Marshall asserted.
He does not think it should be so difficult to understand.
"You have an organization, in this case Tren de Aragua, that has been declared to be a public safety threat, that is considered to be an enemy of the United States," Ira Mehlman, media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, tells AFN. "We have an obligation as a nation to keep them out of this country and to protect the security of the people here."
He reiterates this is clearly a dangerous terrorist organization.
"We have seen the damage, the havoc that Tren de Aragua has brought about in many places in the country, the people whose lives have been lost as the result of this," Mehlman laments. "The judge seems to think that the rights of gang members from Venezuela outweigh the safety and security of the American public, and I'm not sure that the American public would really buy into that argument."
Terror at an apartment complex in Colorado, sex trafficking in Tennessee, and murder in Texas are just a few of the crimes with which Tren de Aragua members in the U.S. have been charged.
Jose Ibarra, convicted in the killing of Georgia nursing student Laken Riley, is also a member of Tren de Aragua.
Still understanding Tren de Aragua
After Trump was inaugurated, a raid in Denver resulted in 50 arrests. 41 were found to be in the U.S. illegally.
Law enforcement does not have a complete grasp of the breadth of the Tren de Aragua threat.
"We're still learning," Marshall said. "Particularly when we have no idea who's crossed the border, we have no ability to contact these individuals or know where they're going. There's no doubt that these gangs become embedded in communities."
Stories from law enforcement officials across the country prove Tren de Aragua's presence in multiple states, Marshall said.
Sometimes it takes an act like the murder of Laken Riley to understand the gang's impact in a community.
According to the Alabama attorney general, the U.S. can respond in one of two ways, and activist judges blocking the president's efforts is not the preferred path.
"Is it the expectation of Democrats that we just simply sit back and wait for them to commit more harm on the citizens of this country? Or do we expect a president to show leadership like we've seen from President Trump to be able to take affirmative action and remove these individuals from our shores?" Marshall posed.
