G.F.F. v. Trump: A Manhattan District Court Says the AEA Means What It Says
- Citation
- G.F.F. v. Trump, No. 1:25-cv-02886 (S.D.N.Y. May 6, 2025) (Hellerstein, J.)
- Court
- U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York
- Judge
- Hon. Alvin K. Hellerstein
- Statute
- Alien Enemies Act, 50 U.S.C. § 21; 28 U.S.C. § 2241; Fifth Amendment Due Process Clause
- Holding
- AEA proclamation exceeded statutory authority; preliminary injunction issued; class of all S.D.N.Y. detainees subject to the proclamation certified; due process violated by minimal designation notice.
The two named plaintiffs in G.F.F. — a Venezuelan national identified by his initials G.F.F. and a second petitioner, J.G.O. — had been pulled off El Salvador-bound deportation flights and quietly returned from Texas to detention facilities in the Southern District of New York. Their counsel filed habeas in S.D.N.Y. shortly after Trump v. J.G.G. closed the D.D.C. door. Within weeks, Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein had issued one of the most thorough early merits decisions in the AEA docket.
The procedural questions
The government’s threshold position was that the petitioners had no standing because they had been removed from the “process” of AEA designation by their return to ordinary immigration custody, and that whatever claims they had had to be brought via the petition-for-review process under 8 U.S.C. § 1252. Judge Hellerstein rejected both. The petitioners had been designated under the proclamation; the designation continued to carry collateral consequences (FTO categorization, asset-seizure exposure, asylum bars) even if removal had been temporarily averted; and the AEA detention claim was a quintessential habeas claim about the legality of present custody, outside § 1252’s scope.
The merits
On the merits, the court adopted a textual analysis that closely tracked Judge Rodriguez’s in J.A.V.: the AEA’s “invasion or predatory incursion” predicate requires foreign-nation military action, and the administration’s evidence about Tren de Aragua’s relationship with the Maduro regime — even taken at maximum charity — could not bridge that gap.
What distinguishes the G.F.F. opinion is its attention to the due-process deficits in the designation process itself. The court detailed what the petitioners had actually been told. They had not been told what specific acts they were alleged to have committed. They had not been told when they were alleged to have joined Tren de Aragua. They had not been allowed to review the evidence the government had relied on. They had been given a form, in English, identifying them as members of a designated terrorist organization, and they had been put on a plane.
“The Constitution does not permit the Government to label a person an enemy and then refuse to tell him why.”
Class certification
The court certified a class consisting of all noncitizens in the Southern District of New York subject to the AEA proclamation. As in J.A.V., the class certification mattered both for forum stability and for relief: the preliminary injunction enjoined enforcement of Proclamation 10903 against any class member, blunting the government’s ability to move detainees from the district to manufacture mootness.
What it adds to the docket
By the time G.F.F. issued, Judges Hellerstein, Rodriguez, Sweeney (D. Colo.), and Boasberg (D.D.C.) had each ruled against the proclamation on the merits or in connection with class relief. The cumulative effect was to make clear that whatever legal viability the AEA invocation had as an exercise of executive power, it had effectively no traction in the Article III courts. The Fifth Circuit panel decision four months later in W.M.M. made that consensus a matter of circuit-court holding before en banc rehearing intervened. The constitutional question whether the President can use a 1798 wartime statute against a peacetime criminal organization remains, formally, unsettled. The trial-level answer, including from a Trump-appointed judge in Brownsville and a Reagan-appointee’s grandchild in Manhattan, is not.
Filed under The Alien Enemies Act. Published May 6, 2025.