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By Laila Khan & Lauren Harper
On March 15, 2025, President Trump issued a declaration calling for the Alien Enemy Act (AEA) against members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TDA). The AEA is a wartime authority of 236 that allows the president to detain and detain foreign citizens fighting or invading the United States. Following this declaration, the Trump administration sent over 100 Venezuelan immigrants to Salvador prisons and gave them no opportunity to challenge allegations that they were members of the TDA. The administration also sent over 100 others not only because the AEA was called against them, but also because they received an order to remove them, but the government appears to have claimed that they are also members of the TDA, without providing evidence. However, the newly declassified memo obtained through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by the Press Foundation Freedom, undermines some of the key assumptions President Trump has put forward in justifying the call to the AEA.
Specifically, the AEA grants the authority to detain, detain, detain, and deport “indigenous people, citizens, residents, or subjects” of a “hostile state or government” if there is a declared war between the United States and a foreign government, or if a foreign government requests “aggression” or “aggression” or “predatory invasion.” Prior to this year, the AEA had only been called three times into American history in connection with the wars of World War I and World War II in 1812. The March 15 executive order, apart from past practices that used laws during wartime, evoking the AEA, excluded Venezuelan citizens at age 14, is a member of Tren de Aragua, a member of the multinational criminal organization and “not a real naturalized or legal permanent resident of the United States.”
AEA calls require a link to a foreign government to justify its use as it requires a “foreign or government” or a “war against foreign or government aggression or predatory aggression by a foreign or government. In a recent call, President Trump argued that the TDA “takes hostile actions and engages in an irregular war against US territory, in the direct and direction of the Maduro administration in Venezuela, or in other directions.” To further justify the call, the order argues that “evidence rebuttals that the TDA continues to invade, invade the United States, attempt to invade, and threaten to invade the country.” Shortly afterwards, several organizations sued the administration to prevent the call to the AEA from coming into effect, but the US transported more than 200 TDA members that day to the infamous Salvadorian mega prison, the Centre for Terrorism Confinement (CECOT). The government has never provided evidence that these individuals have properly identified TDA members as they disappeared without proof of TDA membership in any court. Many individuals sent to CECOT have no known ties to the TDA other than unfounded allegations made by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE).
Shortly after the March 15 call of the AEA on March 15, both the New York Times and the Washington Post show that most of the 18 agencies that make up the intelligence reporting community do not believe that the TDA is coordinating with the Venezuelan government.
Following the report, National Intelligence’s director Tulsi Gabbard said the leakage of information that contradicted the administration’s claims put national security at stake. Gabbard went further and asked Attorney General Pam Bondy to launch multiple criminal investigations on “deep state criminals” who leaked the information.
Despite allegations of damage to national security, DNI Gabbard’s National Intelligence Council immediately declassified nearly the same information in response to a FOIA request filed by Press Foundation’s Freedom of the Press Foundation.
A partially edited “Community Sense” memo compiled by the National Intelligence Council states that “While Venezuela’s tolerant environment allows the TDA to operate, the Maduro administration probably has no policy to cooperate with the TDA and does not direct the US TDA movement and operation.” The documents suggest that certain Venezuelan officials maintain connections with gang members, but it is more likely that the gang and the Venezuelan government are rivals. This finding ultimately contradicts the key claims of the AEA Declaration that the Maduro administration will administer the TDA.
A week after disclosure of the document, Gabbard fired two top officials from the National Intelligence Council. DNI’s FOIA pages have stripped away many of their resources and no longer include the library of FOIA release documents or FOIA regulations.
The call to the AEA, and perhaps the people’s flight to the Salvador prison, where they have been trapped for life, instilled fear among hundreds of people held in the ice. More cases have been filed in federal courts nationwide to prevent further disappearance. For example, the US Council of Immigration and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Yappav. Trump, no. There is a fear of disappearance to El Salvador under the AEA, the YAPA (who requested that the initials be used to protect his safety), in a joint habeas petition filed by 4:25-CV-144 (MD GA.). Yapa came to the US from Venezuela in 2022 to seek asylum, but although his asylum procedures were pending, he arrested him in February 2025 based on the allegations that he was a “known associate” by the TDA. ICE did not provide evidence regarding the allegations, but later told federal court that the agency “considered the facts.” [Y.A.P.A.’s] Cases assessing his membership at Tren de Aragua and “at that point his membership could not be verified.” However, Yapa remains in custody at the Stewart Detention Center in Lumpkin, Georgia, based on ICE’s previous TDA allegations.
With hundreds of migrants stripped of the due process and instantly deported to third countries, and hundreds of others awaiting in fear of similar fates, FOIA is a powerful tool to question the actions of the administration and ensure that documents like these will become clear.
