It seems at times that nearly every move made by President Donald Trump to enforce existing laws against illegal aliens and criminal foreign gang members are blocked by the federal courts, including occasionally by judges he previously appointed.

On Thursday, a Trump-appointed judge in Texas barred the administration from apprehending and deporting Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members under the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, Breitbart reported.

However, while the judge precluded the use of the AEA to arrest and remove Venezuelan gang members from the U.S., he acknowledged that nothing prohibited those same criminal illegal aliens from being deported under the normal procedures of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Trump targets Venezuelan gang

On Trump's first day in office, he formally designated the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang, along with the MS-13 gang and various Mexican drug cartels, as Foreign Terrorist Organizations, a step up from the prior designation as a Transnational Criminal Organization.

Nearly two months later, on March 15, Trump specifically invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 and its rarely used wartime powers against the TdA gang, as he had determined that the gang is "perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."

The AEA, codified as 50 U.S.C. § 21, states that in instances of "declared war" by a foreign nation or "any invasion or predatory incursion" by citizens of said foreign nation, and after the president's public proclamation of such, "all natives, citizens, denizens, or subjects of the hostile nation or government," provided they are 14 or older and not a naturalized U.S. citizen, "shall be liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as alien enemies."

The Act further grants the president broad and exclusive authority to determine the manner and means of enforcement against such alien enemies.

Judge issues injunction

The Associated Press reported on Thursday that U.S. District Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a 2018 Trump appointee, issued an injunction that barred the administration from apprehending and deporting any alleged Venezuelan gang members under the auspices of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.

"Neither the Court nor the parties question the Executive Branch’s authority and responsibility to enforce federal laws and, along with local law enforcement agencies, to protect the nation’s population," Rodriguez acknowledged in his 36-page order. "Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States. The Executive Branch has and will continue to rely on the Immigration and Nationality Act to remove aliens found to represent a danger to the country."

"The question that this lawsuit presents is whether the President can utilize a specific statute, the AEA, to detain and remove Venezuelan aliens who are members of TdA," the judge continued. "As to that question, the historical record renders clear that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms."

Rodriguez took issue with some of the wording in Trump's proclamation, including an alleged linkage between TdA and the Venezuelan government, and quibbled over what constituted an "invasion" or "predatory incursion" in terms of whether or not military forces were involved.

In the end, the judge decided that since there was no "declared war" between the U.S. and Venezuela, nor was he satisfied of the claimed links between the gang and the government, there was therefore no "invasion" or "incursion" to precipitate the AEA's invocation, rendering use of the statute "unlawful."

Ruling set for appeal

The AP reported that Vice President JD Vance reacted during an interview to the breaking news about the judge's ruling on the AEA and immediately vowed that the administration would be "aggressively appealing" what it viewed as a deeply erroneous ruling by a judge who'd exceeded his jurisdiction.

"The judge doesn’t make that determination, whether the Alien Enemies Act can be deployed," Vance asserted. "I think the president of the United States is the one who determines whether this country is being invaded."