As if trying to rush us headlong into a constitutional crisis, ICE hastened to try to deport a busload of detained, mostly Venezuelan immigrants Friday night. The bus seems to have turned around at the last minute to head back to the detention facility.

The twenty-eight immigrants were under deportation orders because of the current administration’s violent interpretation of the Alien Enemies Act. Designed in the eighteenth century to apply to foreign nationals present in the country during wartime, the Alien Enemies Act has been used infrequently, always with disastrous consequences. FDR invoked it in his Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the detention of close to 20,000 Japanese Americans, many of them American citizens.

The migrants were accused of being members of the gang Tren de Aragua. But recent history shows that ICE is willing to apprehend anyone that “looks like” a gang member, which seems to mean anyone [indigenous] with or without tattoos.

Due to quick action by lawyers representing the immigrants, the Supreme Court issued a ruling in the middle of the night to clarify that the administration must stop deportation flights for the time being. It’s unclear whether the bus turning around was directly caused by this, but it’s abundantly clear that the administration will continue being as cruel and inhumane as it feels it can get away with.

(Taken from an email sent to me by Never Again Action.)