President Donald Trump scored a major legal victory Thursday when the full Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed a central lawsuit challenging his use of the Alien Enemies Act.
The ruling removes another courtroom obstacle from the administration’s effort to deport dangerous Venezuelan gang members.
The court considered the matter with its entire roster of active judges rather than relying on the smaller panel that previously addressed the dispute.
Judges concluded that the lawsuit could no longer proceed because the three men who originally brought the challenge had already been removed from the United States.
“The Supreme Court remanded this case to us when the three named petitioners were still in the country. But we have since learned that the government has removed them. Given this change, we conclude that the appeal is moot,” the judges wrote.
The court explained that there was no remaining petitioner eligible to receive relief and no certified class that could keep the litigation alive.
That left the judges without jurisdiction, regardless of how badly Trump’s opponents wanted another sweeping judicial roadblock.
“Given the lack of any named petitioners to whom we could grant relief in this appeal, and given that this case has never and does not now feature any class, we conclude that the appeal is moot. We therefore DISMISS the appeal for lack of jurisdiction,” the judges wrote.
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Judge James Ho, who was appointed by Trump, filed a forceful concurring opinion supporting the president’s authority under the Alien Enemies Act.
His opinion offered a robust defense of presidential power in an area involving immigration enforcement, hostile foreign actors, and public safety.
Trump invoked the law as part of his campaign to remove members of Tren de Aragua, the violent Venezuelan gang that expanded its footprint inside the United States.
The administration has argued that the statute provides necessary authority to act against dangerous foreign gang members before they can cause additional harm.
Several district court judges had ruled against Trump’s use of the law, giving open border activists and their legal allies temporary victories.
A federal judge in Pennsylvania, however, became the first to conclude that Trump could invoke the Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Tren de Aragua members.
The legal battle later reached the Supreme Court, which temporarily blocked the administration from carrying out certain deportations under the statute.
In an unsigned order, the justices said targeted Venezuelans had not received enough time or information to challenge their removals through the courts.
“Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster,” the unsigned decision read.
The Supreme Court then returned the dispute to the Fifth Circuit for additional proceedings.
Before the full court considered the case, a three judge Fifth Circuit panel had voted against Trump’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.
Thursday’s ruling did not broadly settle every legal question surrounding the statute, but it eliminated this particular appeal.
The dismissal also showed the practical limits of litigation built around petitioners who are no longer present and a case that was never certified as a class action.
For Trump, the outcome represents another significant victory in his broader struggle to restore serious immigration enforcement after years of chaos.
His administration has repeatedly argued that presidents must have meaningful tools to confront foreign gangs rather than wait for violent criminals to exploit legal delays.
The decision also leaves immigration activists without the relief they sought from this lawsuit. Washington’s legal resistance machine can file another stack of papers, but this appeal is finished, and the full Fifth Circuit made that unmistakably clear.
