A federal appeals court on March 26, 2025, upheld a temporary block on President Donald Trump’s deportation of hundreds of Venezuelan immigrants, including alleged members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, to a maximum security prison in El Salvador.

The court was skeptical of Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act to defend the deportations. The act, passed in 1798, gives the president the power to detain and remove people from the United States in times of war.

On March 28, Trump asked the Supreme Court for permission under the act to resume deporting Venezuelans to El Salvador while legal battles continue.

Attorney General Pam Bondi previously said the deportations are necessary as part of “modern-day warfare” against narco-terrorists.

Nanya Gupta, policy director of the American Immigration Council, is among experts who note that the Trump administration’s evidence against the migrants, which relied in part on the immigrants’ tattoos and deleted social media pictures, is “flimsy.”

Those who are challenging Trump’s actions in court say the administration has violated constitutional principles of due process. That’s because it gave the migrants no opportunity to refute the government’s claims that they were gang members.

But what is due process? And how does the government balance this important right against national security?

As a constitutional law professor who studies government institutions, I recognize the delicate balance government must strike in protecting civil rights and liberties while allowing presidential administrations to preserve national security and foreign policy interests.

Ultimately, the U.S. Constitution’s framers left it to the courts to........

© The Conversation