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Comment by nitwit005 | Hacker News Reader

You skipped the bit at the front:

> Whenever there is a declared war between the United States and any foreign nation or government, or any invasion or predatory incursion is perpetrated, attempted, or threatened against the territory of the United States by any foreign nation or government, and the President makes public proclamation of the event

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/50/21

Which nation is invading us? All of them? It's extremely obvious ordinary crime wasn't what this was intended for.

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And who declared war? Because of course that is reserved to Congress.

Don’t worry congress up and abdicated their responsibility to provide oversight on this “war”.

https://www.congress.gov/119/bills/hres211/BILLS-119hres211r... - page 4

In other words, they are so afraid to publicly vote on whether this “war” should continue that they have to play stupid games with the legislative calendar.

Tren de aragua is, according to the government, a terror group, and the Venezuelan government alleges they receive state sponsorship from Columbia.

IF those things can be demonstrated as true, then prevent from prior supreme Court rulings cover this scenario pretty well.

If they can't demonstrate that, then the deportations are clearly outside of the scope of the law and judicial interpretation.

There are a lot of “ors” and commas in that law, but it’s not hard to parse unless you’re being willfully obtuse.

((Declared war OR (invasion OR predatory incursion)) IS (perpetrated OR attempted OR threatened)) BY (foreign nation OR foreign government).

The law was drafted in the early 18th century when nation was more of an ethnographic term than a political one.

So "a predatory invasion threatened by Venezuelans" would satisfy that definition.

There is clear legislative intent to limit when the president could apply the law. You're suggesting limitations set by congress are meaningless, so long as the president's staff can form some sort of argument by stretching the facts enough.

Edit: typo

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