President Donald Trump promised to revive the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 during his campaign last fall. "To expedite removals of this savage gang," Trump pledged in an October campaign stop, "I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil."

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, a long dormant law passed by Federalist Party militants but still on the federal legal books, stated "whenever there shall be a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion shall be perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States, by any foreign nation or government," the president has the power to deport all non-citizens of that country if they are "males of the age of fourteen years and upwards." The idea at the time was to remove military-age foreign men likely to engage in martial combat against American citizens during a particular time of turmoil with revolutionary-era France (against which there was a pseudo-war under letters of marque and reprisal on the high seas).

In an inauguration day executive order on immigrant removal, Trump mentioned "recalcitrant countries," but named no particular country that had threatened the United States in his application of the Alien Enemies Act. On March 15, he named Venezuela's Tren de Aragua drug gang in an Executive Order as a terrorist organization under which he would deport aliens using the Alien Enemies Act.

The U.S. Supreme Court has (as of this writing) let Trump's deportations take place under the Alien Enemies Act, even among those who are not Venezuelans.

Few Americans today are aware of the vehement and principled opposition to both the Alien and Sedition Acts by American founders Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. Jefferson, author of the Declaration of Independence, wrote in the Kentucky Resolutions that control over immigration was constitutionally administered by the states (and except for these rarely-invoked Alien Acts of 1798, would continue to be until 1892), and that the Tenth Amendment prohibited the federal government from even legislating on immigration:

"Alien friends are under the jurisdiction and protection of the laws of the State wherein they are: that no power over them has been delegated to the United States, nor prohibited to the individual States, distinct from their power over citizens." 

If your head is exploding because you didn't know that immigration is not among the enumerated powers of the federal government, and that the TentA amendment prohibits the federal government from legislating on immigration, you're not alone. Likewise, most Americans, who think we're not a nation without national immigration laws, would be shocked to find that states (not the federal government) managed immigration law until Ellis Island opened on January 1, 1892. Yet not one of the MAGA people celebrates January 1 as American Independence Day.