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Deploying the Alien Enemies Act Against Iran ([link removed])
Must we wait until after a terrorist attack?
Washington, D.C. (June 24, 2025) – In light of recent events, can the Alien Enemies Act be used to quickly deport Iranian nationals?
George Fishman, Senior Legal Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies and former DHS Deputy General Counsel, answers in the affirmative, having reviewed the legal history, statutory authority, and recent intelligence assessments that could support use of the AEA.
Read: May 2025 full report on Iran and the Alien Enemies Act ([link removed]) and today’s brief update ([link removed]) .
“The Alien Enemies Act is part of the legal toolbox available to any president during a national security crisis,” said Fishman. “Whether or not it should be used is a policy decision, but the law provides clear authority under specific conditions – and with regard to Iran, those conditions have already been met.”
Key Points:
* NBC News has reported ([link removed]) that “Iran sent a message to President Trump at the G7 summit that if he ordered strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, then Iran could activate sleeper cells in the U.S. to launch terror attacks, according to two U.S. officials.”
* A successful or attempted “predatory incursion” in U.S. territory by Iran would give the president access to the AEA’s detention and removal powers. A predatory incursion is most commonly understood as the equivalent of a hostile raid, meaning that a terrorist attack perpetrated by Iran could trigger the AEA, as likely could an assassination or attempted assassination.
* Iran has been labeled by the U.S. State Department as a designated state sponsor of terrorism ([link removed]) for four decades – indeed, it is considered by the State Department to be the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
* Intelligence and law enforcement officials have linked Iranian operatives to multiple assassination plots in the U.S. and allied countries, including a plot against then- presidential candidate Donald Trump, and “in 2018, a U.S. federal court found Iran and the IRGC liable for the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing [in Saudi Arabia] that killed 19 U.S. citizens”.
* There are, at the very least, over 100,000 Iranian nationals present, legally or illegally, in the U.S. As to “temporary” visitors, in fiscal year 2023 alone, the State Department issued 17,634 ([link removed]) nonimmigrant visas to Iranian nationals; in the 2023/24 academic year, 12,430 ([link removed]) Iranian students were attending American institutions of higher education ([link removed]) ; in 2024, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved petitions for 857 ([link removed]) Iranians for initial employment as H-1B aliens in high-tech and other specialty occupations.
* The normal procedures and rights accorded aliens by the Immigration and Nationality Act do not apply to detention and removal under the AEA, bypassing a potentially lengthy immigration court process.
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