The Alien Enemies Act specifically allows the president to detain, relocate, or deport non-citizens from a country considered an enemy of the U.S. during wartime.
The fine print of the act says the president can only take on this authority once Congress has declared war, and — while the U.S. has been involved in plenty of conflicts over the decades — it hasn’t done so formally since 1942.
The federal government doesn’t have the capacity to identify, track down, round up and remove every single one of the 11 million-plus undocumented immigrants in this country.
One of the primary obstacles is a lack of funding for immigration enforcement, something that lawmakers sought to address in a bipartisan border security bill earlier this year. It would have put $20 billion toward border provisions and implemented several policy changes to adjust and expedite the asylum process.
If Trump were reelected and proceeded to invoke these powers — which he could do unilaterally, unless a majority of the House and Senate were to block him — he would be challenged in court immediately and have a tough time defending his case.
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