Court Says Trump Can’t Use 18th-Century Law To Deport Venezuelan Immigrants
The NPR Politics Podcast
NPR
4.5 • 24.9K Ratings
🗓️ 4 September 2025
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This episode: politics correspondent Sarah McCammon, immigration policy reporter Ximena Bustillo, and White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.
This podcast was produced by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs, and edited by Rachel Baye. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Support for NPR and the following message come from the Kauffman Foundation, |
| 0:04.8 | providing access to opportunities that help people achieve financial stability, |
| 0:09.2 | upward mobility, and economic prosperity, regardless of race, gender, or geography. |
| 0:14.4 | Coffman.org |
| 0:15.4 | Hi, this is Eva from Long Island, and for the first time in three years of planting milkweed, |
| 0:22.5 | I am counting all the eggs and baby caterpillars that one day will become monarch butterflies. |
| 0:27.8 | This podcast was recorded at... |
| 0:29.9 | 12.40 p.m. Eastern Time on Thursday, September 4th, 2025. |
| 0:34.3 | Things may have changed by the time you hear this, but hopefully I'll be counting |
| 0:37.3 | chrysalises and butterflies soon and wishing them well on their journey. Enjoy the show. |
| 0:45.8 | Ah, fly little butterflies. I think monarch butterflies are very beautiful. I dream to see |
| 0:51.5 | the migration. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Sarah McCammon. I cover politics. I'm Hima Bustillo, and I cover immigration policy. And I'm Frank O'Donias. I cover the White House. Today on the podcast, a court has ruled that the Trump administration cannot use the Alien Enemies Act as a justification to deport Venezuelan immigrants. But let's back up for a second. |
| 1:15.6 | Franco, just remind us, if you would, what President Trump was trying to do when he invoked this act. I mean, it's basically a key part of his effort to carry out his promise of a mass deportation program that he talked about since his campaign. |
| 1:26.5 | It's basically an 18th century wartime law, |
| 1:30.9 | very obscure, called the Alien Enemies Act, to quickly deport large group of Venezuelans without |
| 1:38.2 | regular due process. It's actually a law that was used to justify the incarceration of |
| 1:43.5 | Japanese Americans, as well as Italian and German immigrants in World War II. |
| 1:48.3 | And now Trump is trying to use it to target Venezuelan streetgram called Trend de Aragua. |
| 1:53.3 | He claims that the gang is actually doing this irregular warfare in the United States at the direction of the Maduro regime, which, of course, |
| 2:02.4 | is the government of Venezuelan president Nicholas Maduro. But that claim of an invasion has |
| 2:09.3 | actually been pushed back by the courts. Yeah, we've talked a lot about this broader |
| 2:12.9 | immigration crackdown, but the invocation of this law is specifically focused on this Venezuelan gang. |
... |
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