Confusion surfaced over whether President Trump signed a proclamation that invoked a centuries-old law to deport suspected Venezuelan gang members.
The president last week used the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to oust Venezuelan migrants suspected of being in the Tran de Aragua gang, treating them like wartime enemies of the U.S. government and arresting, detaining and deporting them with no due process.
That proclamation bears his signature and is posted on the Federal Register.
But on Friday, Mr. Trump told reporters he didn’t sign a declaration.
“We want to get criminals out of our country, number one, and I don’t know when it was signed, because I didn’t sign it,” he said. “Other people handled it, but [Secretary of State] Marco Rubio has done a great job and he wanted them out and we go along with that. We want to get criminals out of our country.”
The White House clarified the misunderstanding, saying, “President Trump was obviously referring to the original Alien Enemies Act that was signed back in 1798.”
“The recent Executive Order was personally signed by President Trump invoking the Alien Enemies Act that designated Tren de Aragua as a Foreign Terrorist Organization in order to apprehend and deport these heinous criminals,” White House Communications Director Steven Cheung said in a statement.
Mr. Trump’s interaction with reporters came after he bashed former President Biden for using an autopen, a machine that generates signatures and signs documents, and declared that the Biden administration’s preemptive pardons for members of the Jan. 6 Select Committee from the Biden White House were “VOID, VACANT” because his predecessor didn’t physically sign them.
Rep. Buddy Carter, Georgia Republican, followed up by introducing legislation that would require any sitting president to personally sign a pardon.
The Washington Times reached out to the White House for further comment about signing the proclamation.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump’s move to invoke the Alien Enemies Act has received backlash in the courts after the administration sent nearly 250 Venezuelans suspected of being Tren de Aragua members to El Salvador last weekend.
That move prompted scrutiny from U.S. District Judge James Boasberg, who ordered the flights be turned around. He said on Friday during a hearing that the federal government was “not being terribly cooperative at this point.”
He added, “I will get to the bottom of whether they violated my order, who ordered this and what the consequences will be.”
Judge Boasberg’s clash with the administration prompted Mr. Trump to call him a “radical left lunatic, troublemaker and agitator” and demand that he be impeached.
A group of House Republicans has already filed legislation to impeach the judge, but the push may hit a rut because of the party’s thin majority and a bipartisan unwillingness to punish judges who disagree with Mr. Trump.
