Former President Donald Trump said he wanted to “go back to 1798” to invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport migrant criminals.
The former president again threatened to use part of the Alien and Sedition Acts, which was first signed into law by the second U.S. president, John Adams, to deal with migrant criminals—again bringing up the name of a Venezuelan gang that has captured headlines for terrorizing an apartment complex.
“To expedite removals of Tren de Aragua and other savage gangs like MS-13—equally violent—I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of… 1798,” Trump told a crowd at a rally in Greenville, North Carolina. “Think of that—1798. That’s when we had real politicians that said ‘We’re not gonna play games.’ We have to go back to 1798—to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil. We’re gonna knock the hell out of them.”
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The Alien and Sedition Acts were passed by Congress as the United States faced a possible war with France, according to the National Archives. Only one part of the bill, the Alien Enemies Act, is still in effect to this day. It was controversially invoked during both World War I and World War II, including as a basis for the internment of Japanese-Americans.
Trump has been bringing the controversial law up frequently at his rallies and stump speeches, and at rallies in Nevada and Colorado, he promised to launch “Operation Aurora,” named after the Colorado city where Tren de Aragua’s reported takeover took place.
The city’s own police department and Republican mayor, Mike Coffman, have disputed the claims that the gang has “taken over” parts of the city, and called their influence “isolated.”
However, the Aurora Police Department did arrest 10 alleged members of the gang for “committing acts of violence against members of the migrant community” in September, according to a press release.
