Refugee and migrant advocacy groups have slammed the Trump administration’s use of a little used wartime emergency measure to deport hundreds of asylum seekers.

The use of the ‘Enemy Aliens Act’ to make mass deportations of Venezuelans, many of whom had asylum cases pending, has been widely condemned.

The law, enacted in 1798, has historically only been used during wartime and has never been used to effect mass removals. The Trump administration has claimed the deportees were members of Venezuelan gangs.

NGO Refugees International (RI) said, in a statement, that under the Act, asylum seekers have no opportunity to dispute their alleged gang ties before they are summarily deported.

RI said the move exposed the deportees to potential persecution in authoritarian Venezuela or to prisons in El Salvador, where torture is rampant.

“Invoking this law now, when war has not been declared and in relation to a foreign criminal gang, is a brazen encroachment on Congressional authority and severely undermines longstanding legal protections for immigrants and asylum seekers,” RI said. 

“Beyond the unlawful invocation of the Alien Enemies Act, Refugees International is deeply concerned with the administration’s autocratic approach to implementation of the Act over the past few days.

“President Trump signed an order invoking the Act on March 14, but kept it secret as it gathered almost 250 Venezuelans for flights to El Salvador.”

Despite a judge explicitly restrained deportation flights and ordered any flight in the air to be returned, the Trump administration allowed a flight in the air to land in El Salvador, and two further flights to land in El Salvador several hours later, while publicly condemning the court ruling and vilifying the judge in the media. 

“Refugees International is deeply concerned by the administration’s disregard of the court’s ruling and for potential irreparable harm to those individuals deported,” the IR statement said.

“The use of the antiquated Alien Enemies Act is particularly appalling. The Act represents some of the darkest chapters in US history and it has no place in the contemporary United States. The administration’s use of this act to assert a dangerous expansion of executive power is a deeply ominous sign.”

The American Civil Liberties Union is already fighting the effort and has urged local governments to put in place measures that limit the use of local resources to assist with immigration enforcement.