The American Civil Liberties Union filed legal challenges against former President Trump's administration more than 400 times, helping to halt policies including separating immigrant children from their parents. The ACLU issued a blueprint on how it plans to respond to a second Trump term, given his vows to go much further on immigration with calls for mass raids and the largest deportation operation in history. “This is really kind of the sequel on the earlier work that we did fighting off the worst of the Trump abuses,” ACLU president Anthony Romero told the Associated Press.
Trump has endorsed major arrest operations against people in the U.S. illegally, with the help of the National Guard. He’s talked of opening large detention camps and fast-tracking deportations. He has discussed ending automatic citizenship for anyone born in the U.S., a guarantee in the 14th Amendment that some conservatives argue shouldn’t apply to the children of people in the U.S. illegally. Trump says he can streamline arrests and deportations under the Alien Enemies Act of 1789, which could allow him to detain and deport some noncitizens. The ACLU says the act only gives the president limited use of such powers during a “declared war,” or an “invasion or predatory incursion” involving a foreign nation or government. The ACLU says Trump’s pledges to end birthright citizenship contradict constitutional guarantees of citizenship to people born in the U.S. without regard for parentage and that the Supreme Court has affirmed that those guarantees applied to U.S-born children even if their parents didn’t have citizenship rights.