A conservative appeals court has rejected President Trump’s claim that undocumented immigration amounts to an “invasion” of the U.S., shooting down a key legal pillar of his mass deportation effort.

The three-judge panel of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a 1798 law does not authorize Trump to rapidly deport suspected members of a Venezuelan gang without due process.

The decision is a major setback for Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown but the conservative-dominated Supreme Court is still likely to get the last word on the issue.

“The Trump administration’s use of a wartime statute during peacetime to regulate immigration was rightly shut down by the court,” said Lee Gelernt a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union. “This is a critically important decis

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