Defending the Trump Administration in the Central Court of Appeals for the 5th U.S. Circuit (D.C. Circuit)

Texas, with its extensive network of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities, is beginning to play an outsize role in the litigation. Judge Rodriguez is one of three judges in the state that have heard challenges from groups of people from Venezuela. When one of his colleagues, Judge James Wesley Hendrix in the Northern District of Texas, declined to stop the imminent deportation of another group of Venezuelans held at the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, the Supreme Court stepped in and issued an emergency order blocking it.

The Supreme Court has already ruled the Trump administration can remove migrants under the Alien Enemies Act, but with a caveat. Migrants accused of being gang members must be given time to challenge their removal from the country. The court didn’t specify a length of time.

“The court ruled the president can’t unilaterally declare an invasion of the United States and invoke a wartime authority during peacetime,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union and lead counsel for the three Venezuelan plaintiffs, said in a statement. This decision makes it impossible for more people to be sent to the notoriousCECOT prison.

Judge Rodriguez said there was no reference to a threat of an armed group entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or take over a portion of the nation.

Even though the Court finds that an invasion should involve an organized, armed force entering the United States to engage in destructive conduct in a specific geographical area, the action doesn’t need to be preceded by war.

The Department of Homeland Security didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is considered one of the country’s most conservative courts. The case could be heard by the Supreme Court.

President Trump issued a proclamation in March accusing Tren de Aragua of “perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion against the territory of the United States.”

In late March, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a ruling by federal Judge James Boasberg and denied the White House’s use of the wartime authority by a vote of 2 to 1. There wasn’t enough time for alleged gang members to contest the cases, which was cited by Judge Millett.

A key part of the immigration agenda, which began in Washington, is now spreading around the country, drawing skepticism and tough questioning from judges even with perfect conservative credentials.

A judge in Texas ordered the immediate release of a couple from Venezuela after they were found not guilty of being members of the communist group known as Tren de Aragua.