A.S.R. v. Trump: The Outlier — A District Court Endorses the AEA Proclamation
- Citation
- A.S.R. v. Trump, No. 3:25-cv-00113 (W.D. Pa. May 13, 2025) (Haines, J.)
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania
- Judge
- Hon. Stephanie L. Haines
- Statute
- Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. § 21; 28 U.S.C. § 2241
- Holding
- Proclamation upheld as a permissible exercise of AEA authority; class subsequently disbanded for lack of class members in district; 21 days' notice in English and Spanish required before any AEA removal.
Every consensus has its outlier, and in the Alien Enemies Act litigation the outlier is Judge Stephanie L. Haines of the Western District of Pennsylvania. On May 13, 2025, Judge Haines — a Trump appointee — became the first and so far only federal judge to uphold the March 2025 invocation of the AEA on the merits. The opinion is short by AEA standards, deferential by historical standards, and notable mostly for what it concedes even while ruling for the government.
The reasoning
Judge Haines’s opinion begins with a heavy presumption of executive authority over foreign affairs and applies the political-question doctrine more broadly than the rest of the AEA docket has accepted. The court treats the President’s findings about Tren de Aragua — that it operates “at the direction of the Maduro regime,” that its activities constitute a “predatory incursion” — as conclusions on which judicial second-guessing is inappropriate.
On the statutory text, the opinion treats the FTO designation as “the very definition” of incursion in light of “modern developments” in transnational terrorism. That formulation strains the statutory language: the AEA was enacted in 1798, and the framers’ understanding of an “incursion” is not obviously elastic enough to encompass narcotics trafficking by individual gang members. Judges Rodriguez, Sweeney, Hellerstein, and the Fifth Circuit panel each rejected exactly this reasoning. Judge Haines accepts it.
The notice ruling
Even within the opinion’s permissive framework, however, the court draws a hard procedural line. Twenty-one days’ written notice. In English and Spanish. Before any removal under the proclamation. The court did not attempt to define the maximum notice the Constitution requires; it simply required at least that much. The choice of twenty-one days mirrors Judge Sweeney’s ruling a week earlier in D.B.U.; the inclusion of Spanish (rather than “the detainee’s language”) reflects the fact that the affected class in this case was wholly Venezuelan.
The notice ruling is the opinion’s most quoted passage. It demonstrates how thoroughly the procedural requirements first crystallized in Trump v. J.G.G. and A.A.R.P. have permeated even the most deferential AEA decisions: even a court willing to uphold the proclamation will not endorse summary removal.
What happened next
The class the court initially certified was disbanded shortly after. The named petitioner was transferred out of the district; no other class members remained in the Western District of Pennsylvania; numerosity failed. The substantive merits ruling stands as the lone district-court endorsement of the AEA invocation, but its operational reach has shrunk to nothing. No removal under the AEA has occurred in the Western District of Pennsylvania since the ruling issued.
“Even on the most deferential reading of the President’s authority, the Government must give the people it intends to deport meaningful notice of why and meaningful opportunity to be heard.”
Significance
The opinion’s significance lies in its narrowness. Read as government-friendly, it confirms that even sympathetic courts will not allow the AEA to dispense with constitutional process. Read as outlier, it offers a useful counterpoint that highlights the rigor of the analyses in J.A.V., G.F.F., D.B.U., and the Fifth Circuit panel decision. If the Supreme Court eventually takes the AEA merits, A.S.R. will be the leading authority on the government’s side, and the slimness of the support it provides will itself tell us something.
Filed under The Alien Enemies Act. Published May 13, 2025.