Friend,
The Trump administration aims to tear apart millions of families and disrupt communities across the country starting on January 20, 2025 -- and it’s likely to rely on the Alien Enemies Act (AEA), a rarely-used law from the 1790s, to do it.
The AEA is an outdated and xenophobic war authority that Trump wants to use in peacetime to detain and deport people without regard for human rights or basic due process. In effect, this law -- the last of the widely decried Alien and Sedition Acts -- allows for state-sanctioned terror and discrimination against immigrants.
To put his plan into effect, Trump would claim that immigrants coming to the United States -- mothers and children fleeing violence, your neighbors unable to return to a country devastated by natural disasters, workers trying to get by and build their lives here -- are “invaders”.
It’s a disgusting strategy rooted in racism and xenophobia, and we know the consequences of such a policy because we’ve seen it before. The AEA was used to justify the internment of Japanese, German, and Italian immigrants during WWII -- a horrific chapter in U.S. history that we cannot allow the far right to repeat.
But the Neighbors Not Enemies Act, introduced by Sen. Mazie Hirono and Rep Ilhan Omar, would repeal the AEA once and for all, preventing any president from using it to inflict cruelty on immigrant communities.
