President Donald Trump was blocked by a federal appeals court from using an 18th-century wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport Venezuelan migrants his administration says belong to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua .

The 2-1 decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found that there was not an "invasion or predatory incursion" by a foreign power as required by the 1798 statute to justify its invocation in the case of this group of migrants.

Trump has, through executive order, invoked the Alien Enemies Act by arguing that there is an invasion of the U.S. by foreign criminal gangs that his administration has now designated as terrorist groups.

The Alien Enemies Act was only used three times before in U.S. history, all during declared wars—in the War of 1812 an

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