US intelligence contradicts Trump’s justification for Alien Enemies Act deportations

The National Intelligence Council, drawing on the acumen of the United States’ 18 intelligence agencies, determined in a secret assessment early this month that the Venezuelan government is not directing an invasion of the United States by the prison gang Tren de Aragua, a judgment that contradicts President Donald Trump’s public statements, according to people familiar with the matter.

The determination is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive assessment to date undercutting Trump’s rationale for deporting suspected gang members without due process under the Alien Enemies Act, the 1798 law last used during World War II that laid the foundation for the incarceration of more than 110,000 Japanese Americans.

Trump invoked the act in mid-March, proclaiming without evidence that Tren de Aragua is perpetrating an “invasion” of the United States “at the direction” of the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. Under the Alien Enemies Act, the government sent planeloads of alleged gang members to El Salvador’s notorious megaprison despite a judge’s order to turn the planes around and afford the detainees an opportunity to challenge their removal through standard legal processes.

The intelligence product found that although there are some low-level contacts between the Maduro government and Tren de Aragua, or TdA, the gang does not operate at the direction of Venezuela’s leader. The product builds on U.S. intelligence findings in February, first reported by the New York Times, that the gang is not controlled by Venezuela.

The National Intelligence Council is the analytic hub of the U.S. intelligence community that reports to Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. It is composed of veteran specialists in particular regions or topics, known as national intelligence officers, and produces classified assessments meant to represent the assessment of all U.S. spy agencies.

The people familiar with this assessment spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential intelligence matters.

When asked about the findings, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence dismissed it as the work of “deep state actors” working in conjunction with the media.

“President Trump took necessary and historic action to safeguard our nation when he deported these violent Tren de Aragua terrorists,” the statement said. “Now that America is safer without these terrorists in our cities, deep state actors have resorted to using their propaganda arm to attack the President’s successful policies.”

The finding was nearly unanimous among the U.S. intelligence agencies with the exception of the FBI, which assessed a moderate level of cooperation between the gang and the Venezuelan government, two people familiar with the matter said.

The dispute over the group’s ties to Venezuela come amid a larger standoff between the Trump administration and the courts that has alarmed constitutional scholars, the president’s political opponents and some fellow Republicans as the administration challenges judges’ orders arising from this case and others.

The Alien Enemies Act empowers the executive branch to summarily remove foreigners whose home country is at war with the United States or waging a “predatory incursion” into U.S. territory. Legal experts believe the law requires that the invasion or incursion be linked to the actions of a foreign government.

Trump’s invocation of the act claims such a link: “TdA is undertaking hostile actions and conducting irregular warfare against the territory of the United States both directly and at the direction, clandestine or otherwise, of the Maduro regime in Venezuela.”

Two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jim Himes (Connecticut), the panel’s top member from his party, and Rep. Joaquin Castro (Texas), wrote to Gabbard on April 10 imploring her to declassify information on TdA’s alleged ties to the Venezuelan government, a committee spokesperson said. The pair asked her to do so “in keeping with her public commitment to greater transparency” from U.S. spy agencies. They have yet to receive a reply, the spokesperson said.

Castro asked Gabbard at an Intelligence Committee hearing in late March whether U.S. spy agencies assessed that the Maduro government is directing “any hostile actions against the United States.”

“There are varied assessments that came from different intelligence community elements,” Gabbard replied. She did not disclose that almost all U.S. intelligence agencies, with the exception of the FBI, did not see evidence of such links.

At the hearing, Castro also asked CIA Director John Ratcliffe whether U.S. spy agencies had an assessment that the United States is at war with, or being invaded by, Venezuela. “We have no assessment that says that,” Ratcliffe replied.

A former U.S. intelligence officer who served in South America, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the issue’s sensitivity, said he knew of no evidence that TdA was directed by Maduro and his allies. That view is shared widely by regional analysts.

“The idea that Maduro is directing Tren de Aragua members and sending criminals to infiltrate the United States is ludicrous,” said Geoff Ramsey, a Venezuela expert at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank.

The group, which started as a prison gang in the Venezuelan state of Aragua in 2014, has expanded into a transnational gang that has carried out brazen crimes from Santiago, Chile, to New York City. But it does not operate with a clearly defined hierarchical structure, Ramsey said.

“Tren de Aragua has become more like a brand that any group of carjackers from Miami down to Argentina can invoke to further their criminal activity, but there’s really no clear sense of hierarchy,” he said. “And the reality is that Tren de Aragua has not always gotten along with the Maduro government: We saw just a few years ago, the military in 2023, stormed a prison that Tren de Aragua controlled and allegedly carried out extrajudicial executions.”

Trump’s standoff with the courts over his deportation orders has grown increasingly rancorous.

For weeks, Chief U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg of D.C. has pressed the Justice Department on why the administration deposited more than 130 Venezuelan deportees in the Salvadoran megaprison without due process, hours after he ordered the administration not to do so and said any planes that had already taken off should be turned around and returned to the United States.

On Wednesday, he said he would launch proceedings to determine whether any Trump administration officials defied his order not to deport the migrants and should face criminal contempt charges.

“The Constitution does not tolerate willful disobedience of judicial orders — especially by officials of a coordinate branch who have sworn an oath to uphold it,” the judge said.

Allowing political leaders to defy court judgments would make “a solemn mockery” of “the constitution itself,” he said.

Administration officials have broadly maintained that they’ve complied with all court orders, even as they’ve repeatedly walked right up to the line of open defiance and publicly attacked Boasberg and other judges for seeking to restrain the president’s agenda.

Steven Cheung, White House communications director, said in an emailed statement, “The President is 100% committed to ensuring that terrorists and criminal illegal migrants are no longer a threat to Americans and their communities across the country.”