5th Circuit Rules Against Trump Admin on Its Use

Late Tuesday night, the 5th Circuit handed down its resolution in the case now styled W.M.M. v. Trump (beforehand styled as A.A.R.P. v. Trump) concerning the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act (AEA) to take away purported Tren de Aragua (TdA) members from the U.S. To cut to the chase, the court held that the administration improperly invoked the AEA to justify eradicating the purported TdA members because “we find no invasion or predatory incursion.” 

This case has had a difficult procedural historical past that’s concerned a number of notable selections and a foray to the Supreme Court, which resulted in a shocking Easter weekend ruling that despatched the case back to the 5th Circuit to decide two issues: 

(1) all the traditional preliminary injunction elements, including chance of success on the deserves, as to the named [Petitioners’] underlying habeas claims that the AEA doesn’t authorize their removing pursuant to the President’s March 14, 2025, Proclamation, and (2) the issue of what discover is due, as to the putative class’s due course of claims against abstract removing.

RELATED: ‘This Is a District Court—Not a Denny’s’: 5th Circuit Responds to SCOTUS in TdA Case and Hoo Boy

Breaking: Supreme Court Again Blocks Trump Admin From Deporting TdA Members Without ‘Proper’ Notice

To invoke a cliché, the court fairly properly cut up the newborn in its resolution, although one might moderately argue not in equal parts. 

It’s a 185-page opinion, authored by Judge Leslie Southwick (a Bush 43 appointee), with Judge Irma Ramirez (a Biden appointee) concurring on the AEA issue and dissenting on the discover issue. (While she agrees that the federal government’s revised discover gives satisfactory data, she disagrees that seven days’ discover is adequate time and asserts that the discover timeframe must be 21 days.) And then Judge Andrew Oldham (a Trump appointee) dissents (emphatically) on the AEA issue but seemingly agrees that the discover supplied by the federal government gives satisfactory due course of while disagreeing with the bulk’s rationale for discovering it so. 

The coronary heart of the ruling — and why it is thought-about a loss for the Trump administration — is the AEA dedication. Margot Cleveland has helpfully laid out some of the key parts from the opinion in this thread:

2/ Following are related passages explaining court’s opinion. pic.twitter.com/jLVcjU47WN

— Margot Cleveland (@ProfMJCleveland) September 3, 2025

However, to sum it up, as famous above, the court mainly second-guesses President Trump’s Proclamation/dedication that TdA “is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.” The court grants a preliminary injunction to forestall removing under the AEA and remands the case to the district court for additional proceedings, though it does make the purpose that this ruling is only as to the AEA invocation:

We declare, as did the Supreme Court, that our injunction solely applies to the use of the war-related federal statute and doesn’t impede use of any other statutory authority for eradicating international terrorists.

Oldham’s dissent does a thorough job of highlighting the fact that the AEA dedication is one rightly reserved for the manager, not the judiciary, and that the foundations (and law) seem to apply in a different way for this president:

For 227 years, every President of every political get together has loved the same broad powers to repel threats to our Nation under the Alien Enemies Act (“AEA”). And from the daybreak of our Nation until President Trump took workplace a second time, courts have never second-guessed the President’s invocation of that Act. Not once. The motive is simple: Determining whether or not the AEA’s preconditions are glad—whether or not there’s a declared conflict, or “any invasion or predatory incursion” being “perpetrated, attempted, or threatened,” 50 U.S.C. § 21—relies upon upon “matters of political judgment for which judges have neither technical competence nor official responsibility.” Ludecke v. Watkins, 335 U.S. 160, 170 (1948).

…

For President Trump, however, the foundations are different. Today the bulk holds that President Trump is just an atypical civil litigant. His declaration of a predatory incursion shouldn’t be conclusive. Far from it. Rather, President Trump must plead adequate details—as if he have been some run-of-the-mill plaintiff in a breach-of-contract case—to persuade a federal choose that he’s entitled to aid. 

That contravenes over 200 years of legal precedent. And it transmogrifies the least-dangerous department into robed crusaders who get to playact as multitudinous Commanders in Chief.

This one will doubtless be met with a petition for rehearing en banc (by the administration) and, undoubtedly, discover its method back up at the Supreme Court (regardless of how that shakes out) before all is said and executed, but for now, it is a blow to the administration’s use of the AEA for removing functions. 

Editor’s Note: Radical leftist judges are doing every thing they will to hamstring President Trump’s agenda to make America great again.

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