Vance defends use of Alien Enemies Act, calls out meddlesome judges

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Vice President JD Vance spoke at length Monday with Ross Douthat of the New York Times about the successes and setbacks that the Trump administration has faced so far in its counteroffensive against the nation's longstanding "invasion" by foreign nationals.

Vance justified the use of the Alien Enemies Act, raised concerns about the judicial activism getting in the way of immigration enforcement, spoke to the ruinous impact of the "invasion" overseen by the previous administration, and detailed what success looks like on this issue.

The vice president underscored that the administration is not impelled to deport illegal aliens by hatred but rather by a commitment to the common good and an understanding that rapid immigration, particularly of the unlawful variety, strikes at national unity and "social solidarity."

He noted further that while the country has been confronted with an unsustainable "invasion," the administration has remedies available and the willpower to pursue them.

Alien Enemies Act

President Donald Trump issued a proclamation on March 15 invoking the Alien Enemies Act and declaring that Tren de Aragua is "a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization" aligned with the Venezuelan Maduro regime that "is perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States."

"I proclaim that all Venezuelan citizens 14 years of age or older who are members of TdA, are within the United States, and are not actually naturalized or lawful permanent residents of the United States are liable to be apprehended, restrained, secured, and removed as Alien Enemies," added Trump.

The administration ousted 137 Venezuelan aliens under the law on the day of the proclamation but was promptly barred from executing additional removals under the AEA by a federal judge who deemed Trump's invocation of the AEA through the proclamation "unlawful."

Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Numerous federal judges have issued additional prohibitions against removals under the AEA in the months since, including U.S. District Judge Clay Land, who ruled Wednesday that while the president "should be afforded substantial deference in the execution of his duties under Article II of the Constitution," the administration could not send a Venezuelan national packing.

When pressed about the AEA, Vance suggested Monday that the courts "should be extremely deferential to these questions of political judgment made by the people's elected president of the United States."

Seizing upon Douthat's remark that there aren't five million people waging war, Vance said, "OK, but are there thousands, maybe tens of thousands of people? And then when you take their extended family, their networks, is it much larger than that? Who are quite dangerous people who I think very intentionally came to the United States to cause violence, or to at least profit from violence, and they're fine if violence is an incidental effect of it? Yeah. I do, man."

The vice president added that "people under-appreciate the level of public safety threat that we're under."

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The vice president bemoaned the media's apparent lack of intellectual curiosity about the "level of chaos, the level of violence" in migrant communities with large populations of illegal aliens, where "truly premodern brutality" has apparently become the norm.

Finding the normalization of such brutality in the U.S. intolerable, Vance suggested that the AEA "vests us with the power to take very serious action against this" and indicated that the administration has a responsibility to do so, adding, "It's bad. It's worse than people appreciate."

Vance minced no words regarding the impact of the judicial activism that has so far stood in the way of taking such "serious action," stating, "You cannot have a country where the American people keep on electing immigration enforcement and the courts tell the American people they're not allowed to have what they voted for."

The vice president appeared optimistic, however, stating that "we're very early innings here on what the court is going to interpret the law to mean."

Democrats' favorite MS-13 associate

Douthat likened the approach taken by the administration to the cartels and their foot soldiers to that taken by previous administrations to "anyone associated with Islamic terrorism and so on in the aftermath of September 11," suggesting that the legal process has, in some cases, been sidestepped, that the system in place is "ripe for war-on-terror-style abuses" and that injustices may be inevitable.

While Vance entertained Douthat's concerns — which were couched in a broader conversation about Vance's simultaneous fidelity to American law and to Catholic moral teaching — he intimated the parallel may be weaker than some in the media might want to admit, alluding to the case of MS-13 affiliate Kilmar Abrego Garcia and his portrayal as a man traduced whose civil rights were violated.

"I haven't asked every question about every case, but the ones where I have asked questions and I try to get to the bottom of what's going on, I feel quite comfortable with what's happened," said Vance. "And the one that I've spent the most time understanding is the one of the Maryland father."

Photographer: Nathan Howard/Bloomberg via Getty Images

Democratic lawmakers and the liberal media did their apparent best to leave the American public with the impression that Abrego Garcia was an "innocent father" betrayed by his adoptive government.

It turns out that the Salvadoran national who was returned to his homeland by the Trump administration was an illegal alien linked to a terrorist gang, identified by two immigration courts as a danger to the community, and accused of both domestic abuse and human trafficking.

Vance discussed the controversy over Abrego Garcia's deportation — a decision that has been kicked all the way to the Supreme Court — and noted, "I understand there may be disagreements about the judgments that we made here, but there's just something that it's hard to take serious when so many of the people who are saying we made a terrible error here are the same people who made no protests about how this guy got into the country in the first place or what Joe Biden did for four years to the American southern border."

The vice president noted further that if the media alternatively framed the situation as the president "considering sending the very worst violent gang members in America to a foreign prison — so long as that is a legal thing to do" — then there would likely not be so much "passionate resistance."

Success

While the vice president indicated he would like to see "the gross majority" of illegal aliens who entered the country under the previous administration deported — he suggested the number was around 20 million — Vance said "that is actually a secondary metric of success."

Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

"Success to me is not so much a number, "said Vance. "Success to me is that we have established a set of rules and principles that the courts are comfortable with and that we have the infrastructure that allows us to deport large numbers of illegal aliens when large numbers of illegal aliens come into the country."

The path to success so-defined, he continued, is reliant not only on the administration's efforts but on the courts as well.

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