Human Rights Watch (HRW) on Thursday issued a 59-page report stating that the US should repeal the Alien Enemies Act.
HRW emphasized that US obligations under international law have drastically changed since the Alien Enemies Act was enacted. The organization stated: “[t]he US is party to numerous human rights treaties that oblige the government to ensure respect for fundamental rights, including due process and freedom from discrimination, and to ensure people removed from the US are not sent to countries where they would likely face persecution or torture.”
HRW argued that the act is blatantly incongruent with these objectives. Importantly, the rights group noted that President Donald Trump’s administration has employed the act to target individuals without due process as required by US immigration law. HRW urged the US Congress to approve immediate abrogation of the act.
The 1798 act, passed as a part of the broader Alien and Sedition Acts, authorizes the president to apprehend, restrain, secure and remove individuals who were citizens or subjects of a hostile nation during a declared war or when an invasion or predatory attack was threatened against the US. The Trump administration is the first administration in US history to invoke the act outside of a time of declared war.
In March 2025, the Trump administration utilized the act to deport at least 200 Venezuelan nationals to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. Trump invoked the 227-year-old act “to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil,” particularly members of the transnational criminal organization Tren de Aragua. The majority of those sent to the Salvadoran mega-prison have no past criminal records or criminal charges. The UN previously expressed concern that these individuals may be subject to human rights violations in El Salvador. An HRW commentator also recently remarked that the prison conditions are overcrowded and “filthy and disease-ridden” and that there have been verified accounts of “dismal detention conditions, torture and death.”
Relatedly, a federal Trump-nominated judge on Thursday granted habeas corpus petitions to several Venezuelans, holding that the deportations could not be upheld by way of the act.
