5th Circuit Dismisses Trump Alien Enemies Act Challenge as Moot, Legal Question Unresolved

A federal appeals court in New Orleans has sidestepped a fundamental question about presidential power by dismissing a legal challenge on technical grounds. The Fifth Circuit ruled Thursday that a case challenging President Trump's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act had become moot—meaning there was no longer a live dispute to resolve—because all three Venezuelan plaintiffs at the center of the dispute had already been deported from the United States.

The Trump administration had relied on an 18th-century statute to remove the men, whom it identified as members of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan criminal organization. The Alien Enemies Act, passed in 1798, grants the president sweeping detention and removal powers during wartime or invasion involving a hostile foreign nation. Before Trump, the law had been invoked only once in modern times: President Harry Truman used it in 1946. The administration's theory was novel: it argued that gang activity by members of Tren de Aragua constituted an "invasion or predatory incursion" under the statute, and therefore justified emergency deportation authority.

The Supreme Court had previously intervened in the case, blocking the removals while the legal challenge proceeded. But the justices stopped short of ruling on whether Trump had lawfully invoked the act at all, instead sending the question back to the Fifth Circuit. That court, with all 17 of its active judges participating, then faced a choice: rule on the merits of the constitutional question, or dismiss the case as moot now that the plaintiffs had been removed. The court chose dismissal. Plaintiffs' lawyers asked the judges to allow new plaintiffs to be substituted into the case, but the Fifth Circuit refused.

The ruling leaves the legal status of Trump's invocation unresolved—a result that legal analysts describe as ambiguous. Bryce Poole, a senior legal fellow at Advancing American Freedom, a conservative advocacy organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence, called it "one step forward, one step sideways." The dismissal vacates an earlier ruling that had declared Trump's use of the act unlawful, which Poole characterized as a win for the administration. But by avoiding the merits, the court left the fundamental constitutional question unanswered, meaning the Supreme Court will likely have to decide it in a different case—one with certified class status that won't be vulnerable to mootness dismissals.

Two Trump-appointed judges, however, signaled their own views in concurring opinions. Judge James Ho wrote that he agreed the case was moot but also believed the president's invocation of the Alien Enemies Act was legally sound. He argued that judges must defer to a president's declaration of invasion, including those issued on January 20, 2025—the date Trump took office. "If courts must defer when the President treats illegal immigration as an invasion," Ho wrote, "then a fortiori we must defer when it comes to the narrower question of an invasion by Tren de Aragua." Judge Andrew Oldham, also a Trump appointee, similarly endorsed the president's legal theory.

Not everyone agrees with that reasoning. Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University and scholar at the libertarian Cato Institute, argued that Ho's approach would essentially eliminate meaningful limits on emergency presidential power. "If the president could create an 'invasion' simply by claiming that it exists, it would convert dangerous emergency powers that can only be used in extreme circumstances into blank checks the president can invoke any time he wants," Somin wrote. He contended that such an interpretation contradicts both the text of the Alien Enemies Act and the original meaning of the Constitution.

The dismissal means that the three Venezuelan nationals have been removed from the country with no final judicial determination of whether the legal theory used to deport them was constitutional. The broader question—whether a president can invoke a 228-year-old wartime statute to address gang violence—remains unresolved. The Supreme Court will almost certainly have to answer it eventually, likely in a case where mootness won't be an escape route.