The Brief

Former President Donald Trump, whose bid for the White House has been dominated by his increasingly hardline anti-immigration rhetoric, is vowing to use an obscure, centuries-old law to expedite the removal of undocumented migrants from the U.S.

“I will invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to target and dismantle every migrant criminal network operating on American soil,” he said at a recent rally in California, one of several in which he has brought it up.

Trump is promising that, if reelected, he will use the act to initiate a federal effort called “Operation Aurora” — named after the Colorado town that he claims has been taken over by Venezuelan gangs, which residents and local officials dispute — to target undocumented migrant gang members for arrest and deportation.

He has also suggested that the act could be used to end sanctuary cities, which limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, telling Fox News’ Harris Faulkner that “we can do things in terms of moving people out.”

The Alien Enemies Act is featured in more than just Trump’s stump speech.

It’s also name-checked in the Republican Party’s official 2024 platform, which says it will invoke the law to “remove all known or suspected gang members, drug dealers, or cartel members from the United States, ending the scourge of Illegal Alien gang violence once and for all.”

The act has gotten relatively little attention, let alone use, in the more than 200 years it’s been on the books, as Trump acknowledged.

“Those were the old days, when they had tough politicians,” he told a crowd of supporters in Arizona. “Think of that, 1798. Oh, it’s a powerful act. You couldn’t pass something like that today.”

So what exactly does the act do, and how likely is Trump to be able to use it as promised?

What’s the purpose of the Alien Enemies Act?

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:

Congress, with the support of President John Adams, passed the Alien Enemies Act as part of the four Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 as the U.S. stood on the brink of war with France.

“There was a lot of fear-mongering about French supporters in the United States and about conspiracies to basically get the United States in on France's side,” explains Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck.

The controversial group of laws severely curtailed civil liberties, including by tightening restrictions on foreign-born Americans and limiting speech critical of the government.

After President Thomas Jefferson was elected in 1800, he either repealed or allowed most of the acts to expire, except for the Alien Enemies Act, which does not have an expiration date.

It not only remained on the books but continued to expand in scope: Congress amended it in 1918 to include women.

This 1918 photograph shows "enemy aliens" being corralled by Secret Service operatives at Gloucester, N.J., on their way to internment in the South.

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The Alien Enemies Act has been used three times in American history, all in connection with major military conflicts.

During the War of 1812, all British nationals living in the U.S. were required to report information including their age, length of time in the country, place of residence, family description and whether they had applied for naturalization.

A century later, during World War I, President Woodrow Wilson invoked it against nationals of the Central Powers: the German Empire, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria.

According to the National Archives, U.S. authorities used the law to place over 6,000 “enemy aliens” — many of them Germans — in internment camps, with some remaining in detention up to two years after fighting had ended.

The U.S. Marshals Service says it registered 480,000 German “enemy aliens” and arrested 6,300 between the declaration of war in April 1917 and the armistice in November 1918.

Most recently, President Franklin Roosevelt invoked the act after the attack on Pearl Harbor, designating Japanese, German and Italian nationals as “alien enemies” during World War II.

Roosevelt's proclamation required residents from all three countries to register with the U.S. government and authorized the internment of any alien enemy “deemed potentially dangerous to the peace and security of the US.”

By the end of WWII, over 31,000 suspected enemy aliens and their families — including Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany — had been interned at camps and military facilities across the U.S., according to the National Archives. Several thousand of them were ultimately repatriated to their country of origin, either by choice or by force.

Vladeck says the Alien Enemies Act was used to detain mostly Italian and German nationals. The bulk of the more than 100,000 Japanese Americans who were placed in internment camps during the war were U.S. citizens, detained under different legal grounds.

How strong is Trump’s case?

The act hasn’t been invoked since WWII, which Vladeck says is largely because the nature of war has changed over the last eight decades.

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.

“It hasn't been a source of contemporary controversy because we haven't had a declared war,” he explains. “And no one has tried to argue that that invasion or predatory incursion language could be used in any context other than a conventional war.”

Until Trump, that is. The former president — who has a long history of using dehumanizing language against minority groups and political opponents — has repeatedly referred to the influx of migrants to the U.S. as an “invasion” and vowed mass deportations.

But he hasn’t blamed a specific country or conflict that would fall within the scope of the 1798 act, Vladeck says, which is one of the reasons he doesn’t think Trump’s argument will succeed.

Even some anti-immigration advocates in favor of deploying the act acknowledge those key legal challenges.

Defining illegal immigration as an invasion and migrant gangs as foreign nations would be an “uphill climb in federal court,” George Fishman, former deputy general counsel at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Trump, wrote last year.

What are some possible outcomes?

Trump doesn’t need the Alien Enemies Act to go after undocumented immigrants, Vladeck says, noting that presidents already have the authority to arrest, detain and remove them.

“The issue that has hamstrung each of the last four presidents, of both parties, has not been legal authority — it’s a lack of resources,” he says. “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.

Senate Republicans blocked the bill after pressure from Trump, which Democratic critics say he did so that he could campaign in part on fixing the chaos at the border.

“The irony that Trump is now trotting out this old, anachronistic statute to solve a problem that he could have solved much more directly and much less controversially, I think it ought not to be lost on the folks who are learning about these authorities for the first time,” Vladeck says

A 1942 poster notifies U.S. residents of Japanese, German and Italian nationality to apply at their nearest post office for a certificate of registration.

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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 — Vladeck thinks he would be challenged in court immediately and have a tough time defending his case.

“The sort of the notion that the courts would look kindly upon using this kind of authority where, one, he doesn't need it, and two, it would really be a stretch in what is already a pretty controversial legal power, I think is pretty far-fetched,” he says.

Katherine Yon Ebright, counsel with the Brennan Center’s Liberty and National Security Program, says it’s unclear whether courts would intervene to stop the Alien Enemies Act from being used in peacetime.

“The last time the Alien Enemies Act was challenged, in Ludecke v. Watkins in 1948, the Supreme Court upheld President Harry S. Truman’s extended reliance on the law three years after the end of World War II,” she wrote in a legal analysis. “The Court reasoned that the question of when a war terminates and wartime authorities expire is too ‘political’ for judicial resolution.”

On the other hand, she says, a lot has changed since then, including contemporary understandings of equal protection and due process.

Courts and the public have rejected the 1944 Korematsu case that upheld Japanese internment. Congress provided reparations to surviving Japanese Americans and formally apologized for the use of the Alien Enemies Act during WWII. If a president invokes the act again, she says, courts might look at those legal challenges differently — “on the merits instead of categorically deferring to the president.”

But the surest way to prevent the act from being abused, Yon Ebright writes, would be for Congress to proactively repeal it.

Some Democratic lawmakers — Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Sen. Mazie Hirono of Hawaii — have tried in recent years by introducing the “Neighbors Not Enemies” Act, which would repeal the Alien Enemies Act, but hasn’t gained traction.

Omar has resurfaced her calls for action in light of Trump’s recent comments, writing on X that “it’s past time we put this xenophobic law in the dustbin of history where it belongs.”

The Olympic medal is one of the most coveted awards that an athlete can receive. But at this year's Winter Games in Milan, medalists are celebrating cautiously.

"I was jumping in excitement and it broke," American skier Breezy Johnson said after earning her gold medal on Sunday. She warned other medalists "Don't jump in them."

Johnson is one of several athletes who reported their medals detaching from their ribbon and in one case, breaking in half.

American skier Breezy Johnson holds up her gold medal on the podium of the women's downhill event during the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games at the Tofane Alpine Skiing Centre in Cortina d'Ampezzo on Feb. 8.

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At a press briefing on Tuesday, Olympic organizing committee spokesperson Luca Casassa said he was aware that there were issues with some medals. He added that a solution has been identified and encouraged athletes with faulty medals to return them for repair.

"As a precaution, we are re-checking all the medals to make sure that the athletes' joy can be really 360 degrees when they conquer something which is so precious and so important," Casassa said in Italian.

He didn't specify what the issue or the fix was.

This isn't the first time that Olympic medals needed to be replaced. After the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, athletes raised concerns that their awards, which famously included pieces of the Eiffel Tower, were tarnishing and corroding after the games.

Athletes report faulty medals, but continue to celebrate their achievements

The exact moment when German biathlete Justus Strelow's medal came loose was caught on camera. In a video that has since gone viral, Strelow's teammates are seen clapping when a clang can be heard. The camera pans to Strelow, who picks up his medal and tries to re-attach it to his ribbon — leading to an awkward halt in celebrations.

In a video posted on Instagram, Alysa Liu, a figure skater with Team USA, showed off her ribbon-less medal, alongside the words, "My medal don't need the ribbon."

While most of the medal snafus were limited to strap issues, Swedish cross-country skier Ebba Andersson told Swedish broadcaster SVT that her silver broke in two when it fell in the snow.

Johnson, the American skier, said a small rectangular piece — that was supposed to hold the medal and ribbon together — came apart, making her medal unwearable.

"I'm sure somebody will fix it. It's not crazy broken but a little broken," she said on Sunday.

A few days later, Johnson told Reuters that she received a replacement medal, but she would prefer to have her original back, noting that her new medal was not yet engraved.

"They couldn't fix it so they gave me a new one," she said. "Although I'm actually curious, because then I think some of the later ones they were able to fix. So now I'm kind of wondering if maybe I can get the old one back fixed."

Design flaw or manufacturing glitch?

This year's medals resemble two halves coming together. In a video, Raffaella Paniè, who serves as the Brand, Identity and Look Director at this year's Winter Games, said it was meant to symbolize how each victory is the result of the athlete, as well as their team of family, coaches and trainers.

Reuters reported that the medals featured a safety clip, intended to snap off when pulled forcefully to prevent the ribbon from strangling. The Milano-Cortina press team did not respond to an email request for comment about the medals' clip function.

"It sounds like it's not all of the metals, it's just some of them, which leads me to believe that — just speculating — there's some sort of manufacturing glitch," said Doug McIndoe, editor of The MCA Advisory, a magazine from the Medal Collectors of America.

According to McIndoe, when cast metals are poured into mold and harden, it can cause the metal to shrink.

"It's possible that the opening where that clip goes in is maybe slightly too big, just a few millimeters or less than that, and it's just not securing that clip in properly," he said.

He added that it's an age-old question of how to make medals wearable, explaining that drilling a hole or incorporating one into the design of a mold to thread a ribbon through were historically unpopular methods. It wasn't until the 1960s that Olympic medals began to be worn around athletes' necks.

"Back from Roman times, they were, they were just something you hold in your hands and enjoy and a lot of them were issued in boxes," McIndoe added.

Even with the design hiccups, this year's gold and silver medals are worth the most they've been in a century. That's because the price of these precious metals have soared over the past year. Several factors are contributing to record prices, but a main driver is President Trump's tariffs, which is causing economic uncertainty in markets around the world, according to precious metals expert Peter Krauth.

Although each gold medal contains only about six grams of actual gold (the rest is made of silver) Krauth estimates that their current worth stands at around $2,300 — twice their value during the Summer Olympics in July 2024. A silver medal is currently worth around $1,400 — nearly three times its value two years ago, he said.

Krauth believes the price of gold and silver will continue to remain high for years to come, even up to the 2028 Summer Olympics. But he noted that the real worth of Olympic medals comes from the athletic achievement behind it.

"The sentimental value of a medal is worth way more than the metal in the medal," he said.
Copyright 2026 NPR

Two federal immigration agents involved in the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in Minneapolis last month appear to have lied about the details of the incident, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said Friday.

The agents have been placed on administrative leave after "a joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements," the spokesperson, Tricia McLaughlin, said.

The rare acknowledgment of potential missteps by ICE agents comes after the agency's acting director, Todd Lyons, told Congress on Thursday that ICE has conducted 37 investigations into officers' use of force over the past year. He didn't say whether anyone has been fired.

McLaughlin said the agency is investigating the Jan. 14 shooting of the Venezuelan immigrant, and the officers involved could be fired or criminally prosecuted for any violations.

"The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct," McLaughlin said in Friday's statement. "Violations of this sacred sworn oath will not be tolerated."

DHS initially said the officer fired a shot to "save his life" after being "ambushed and attacked" by three immigrants with a snow shovel and a broom handle during a "targeted traffic stop."

Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, the subject of the traffic stop, was injured after getting shot in the leg. Another Venezuelan man, Alfredo Aljorna, was also accused of attacking the officers.

However, Minnesota U.S. Attorney Dan Rosen on Thursday dropped the charges against them.

McLaughlin did not respond to questions about whether the agency stands by its initial statement describing the agent's behavior during the incident as self-defense.

Since the beginning, eyewitness accounts contradicted the statements made by DHS related to the shooting of Sosa-Celis.

His partner, Indriany Mendoza Camacho, told Minnesota Public Radio last week she was present the night of the shooting, and that Sosa-Celis was trying to separate the agent and the other Venezuelan man so both the immigrants could get into a house.

"I'm a witness, I saw everything, and my partner never grabbed anything to hit him or anything like that," she said.

The shooting happened during Operation Metro Surge, an aggressive immigration crackdown that brought about 3,000 federal agents to Minnesota starting in December.

The Trump administration Thursday announced it was ending Operation Metro Surge. The operation led to more than 4,000 arrests of undocumented immigrants, according to White House border czar Tom Homan, and the killing of two U.S. citizens, Renee Macklin Good and Alex Pretti.

Those shootings are also being investigated by federal authorities.

An internal preliminary review conducted by Customs and Border Protection into Pretti's death also contradicted the Trump administration's initial narrative about his shooting.

Copyright 2026 NPR

It’s been more than four decades yet Rhonda Campbell’s voice still quavered as she stood before a row of television cameras recalling the day in 1981 when a repeat drunk driver killed her 12-year-old sister. She remembers her father crying as he told her what happened, still hears her mother’s scream when the coffin lid closed.

“For our family, 45 years means 45 years of missed birthdays, missed holidays and that empty chair at our table for every holiday gathering. Grief does not fade, it just becomes part of who you are,” Campbell, victim services manager for Mothers Against Drunk Driving California, said Thursday at a press conference.

Campbell joined other victim relatives, lawmakers, advocates, a police chief and a trauma surgeon on a Capitol building stage, all there to build momentum for what’s shaping up to be the biggest legislative effort to address dangerous driving in a generation.

Next to them as they spoke was a table filled with photos of people killed on California’s roads and one old pair of gym shoes belonging to Campbell’s sister.

“Behind every statistic that you will hear today, someone is loved and irreplaceable,” she said.

A bipartisan coalition of state lawmakers has so far introduced 10 bills this year as part of an unprecedented legislative package aimed at confronting California’s permissive roadway safety laws. Many of the proposals directly address issues CalMatters uncovered as part of the ongoing License to Kill series, which revealed how the state has routinely allowed dangerous drivers to stay on the road as its roadway death toll has skyrocketed.

Assemblymember Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine, called the package of bills “California’s largest and most significant anti-drunk driving and anti-DUI push in over two decades.”

“This crisis is an urgent call to action,” she said.

Her colleague on the other side of the aisle, Assemblymember Tom Lackey of Palmdale, said “it’s time.”

“We are failing, folks, and I’m so heartened by this big coalition of people. I’ve waited 12 years for this,” he said, referring to his time in the legislature after decades as a CHP officer.

Lawmakers said to expect a few more bills next week before the deadline to propose new legislation. Several Republican legislators also asked for a formal audit into DMV records and Democrats plan to propose a separate audit of how the state spends its traffic safety funds.

At Thursday’s event, lawmaker after lawmaker stepped to the podium to discuss their proposals and call on colleagues to join them in doing something about traffic deaths. They were often followed by grieving parents, there to talk about unfathomable loss.

For one father, Anatoly Varfolomeev, it was almost too much. He struggled to address the audience, at one point gripping the podium and lowering his head, overcome with emotion before gathering the strength to continue.

Varfolomeev said he’d planned to cite some of the statistics regarding motor vehicle fatalities but it was clear listening to the speakers that they were well known.

“That means that this legislative initiative is long-time overdue,” Varfolomeev said.

His daughter and her childhood friend, both 19, were killed in November 2021 by a drunk driver going more than 100 miles per hour, Varfolomeev said. The driver served just three and a half years behind bars, Varfolomeev said.

As we reported last year, vehicular manslaughter isn’t considered a violent felony in California, meaning drivers who kill can serve only a fraction of their sentence behind bars.

“So this is not a violent crime,” he said, holding up a picture of the mangled, charred remains of a car. “If this is not a violent crime what is?”

One of the bills in the package would add vehicular manslaughter to the state’s list of violent felonies.

A mom, Kellie Montalvo, was there to support the change and the rest of the bill package. Her son Benjamin Montalvo had just turned 21 and was riding his bike when a woman with prior reckless crashes ran him over and fled the scene.

The woman who killed Benjamin – “Bean Dip” as his family affectionately called him – is due to be released from prison as early as this weekend. She called on Governor Newsom to do something.

“Please come out now publicly and support these bills. You have an opportunity to lead the charge in supporting victims,” she said. “His name was ‘Bean Dip’, and he mattered.”

Together, the bills are aimed at strengthening the state’s enforcement system and keeping many reckless drivers from behind the wheel for years longer. The package would bring the state more in line with much of the country, particularly when it comes to handling drunk and drugged drivers.

California saw a more than 50% spike in DUI-related deaths over the most recent 10 years for which federal estimates were available, an increase more than twice as steep as the rest of the country. As our investigation has shown, California currently has some of the weakest DUI laws in the country.

“Safer roads are not a partisan or political issue. They are the basic responsibility we owe to every family that travels upon our roadways,” said Alex Gammelgard, past president of the California Police Chiefs Association.

Yet, even as the number of deaths on our roads soared, California leaders have previously failed to confront these issues.

Many of the bills are sure to face significant challenges in the months to come. Financial concerns, for example, have helped doom previous efforts to pass expanded use of the in-car breathalyzers known as ignition interlock devices. A proposal to bring California in line with much of the rest of the nation is back on the table as part of the current package. Increasing criminal penalties could also be a tough sell in a legislature that’s been so focused in recent years on criminal justice reforms and alternatives to incarceration.

It was a challenge some on the stage alluded to.

“I want to align myself with the idea of compassion. I think California has done a lot to try to be on the compassionate side of the justice system,” said Assemblymember Dawn Addis, a Democrat from San Luis Obispo.

“But I think, in this moment,” she added, “we have tragically failed.”

Lawmakers have a little more than a week before the deadline to introduce new legislation for the session.

The bills highlighted at Thursday’s press conference would:

Make vehicular manslaughter a violent felony and increase DUI penalties

(Introduced by Senator Bob Archuleta, a Democrat from Norwalk.)

Issue: Vehicular manslaughter isn’t considered a “violent” felony under state law, our reporting showed, allowing people convicted of the crime to serve only a fraction of their time behind bars.

Proposed changes: This bill would add vehicular manslaughter with “gross negligence” to the list of violent felonies. It would also add prison time for crashes with multiple victims and drivers with a prior felony DUI within 10 years. Finally, the bill would stiffen penalties for hit-and-run collisions where the driver had a prior DUI and expand so-called “Watson advisements” that make it easier to charge repeat DUI offenders with murder if they kill someone.

Close the DMV point loophole for drivers who get diversion after a deadly crash

(Introduced by Assemblymember Lori Wilson, a Democrat from Suisun City.)

Issue: Recent criminal justice reform laws made it easier for judges to wipe misdemeanor convictions — including vehicular manslaughter — from criminal records. In practice, that means some California drivers can get points added to their license for speeding, but not for killing someone, our reporting has shown.

Proposed change: Ensure the DMV adds points to a drivers license in vehicular manslaughter cases where a driver gets off with misdemeanor diversion instead of a criminal conviction.

Ensure deadly drivers don’t get their licenses back as soon as they get out of prison

(Wilson plans to introduce.)

Issue: License suspensions or revocations often start at the time of a conviction and can actually end before someone is released from prison.

Proposed change: Require license suspensions and revocations to start when a driver is released from incarceration as opposed to at the time of a conviction, potentially keeping licenses away from dangerous drivers for years longer than the current law.

Increase DMV points for fatal crashes 

(Introduced by Assemblymembers Tom Lackey, a Republican from Palmdale, and Cottie Petrie-Norris, a Democrat from Irvine.)

Issue: California drivers currently get the same number of points added to their license for killing someone as they do for non-injury DUIs and hit-and-run collisions.

Proposed change: Increase the number of points a vehicular manslaughter conviction adds to a driver’s license from the current two points to three.

Allow prosecutors to charge DUIs as a felony on second offense 

(Introduced by Lackey)

Issue: It currently takes four DUIs within 10 years to be charged with a felony in California. Many other states allow prosecutors to charge a felony after two or three offenses.

Proposed change: This would allow prosecutors to charge a second DUI offense within 10 years as a felony.

Allow prosecutors to charge DUIs as a felony after third offense, increase repeat DUI penalties

(Introduced by Assemblymember Nick Schultz, a Democrat from Burbank)

Issue: Habitual repeat DUI offenders often face few added penalties.

Proposed change: Similar to Lackey’s bill, Schultz’s would let prosecutors charge a driver with a felony for their third DUI in 10 years. Increase the time some repeat DUI offenders need to have an ignition interlock device installed on their car and the amount of time their driving privileges are revoked.

Revoke the licenses of repeat DUI offenders for longer 

(Introduced by Lackey)

Issue: California takes away repeat DUI offenders’ driving privileges for three years, less time than many other places. Some other states revoke licenses for up to 15 years, or even issue lifetime bans.

Proposed change: Increase the amount of time the DMV can revoke the driving privileges of someone who gets a third DUI to eight years.

Bar people convicted of serious or repeat DUIs from purchasing alcohol

(Introduced by Assemblymember Rhodesia Ransom, a Democrat from Stockton.)

Issue: California’s current system allows many repeat DUI offenders to stay on the road with few safeguards.

Proposed change: Let judges essentially bar people convicted of serious or repeat DUIs from purchasing alcohol by adding a “NO ALCOHOL SALE” sticker to their driver’s licenses, similar to a law recently enacted in Utah. A “Severe DUI” would be defined as an offense with a blood-alcohol level at least twice as high as the legal limit , conviction for two DUIs within three years, or a DUI causing great bodily injury, death, or major property damage.

Mandate in-car breathalyzers for all DUI offenders

(Introduced by Petrie-Norris)

Issue: Most states already require all DUI offenders to install an in-car breathalyzer. California does not. State law currently requires the devices, which a driver must blow into for their car to start, for people convicted of two or more DUIs, or a DUI that results in injury.

Proposed change: Require the breathalyzers for all DUI offenders. (A nearly identical measure was gutted late in the legislative process last year after the DMV said it did not have the technology or funding to implement the changes.)

Expand law enforcement DUI training

(Introduced by Assemblymember Juan Alanis, a Republican from Modesto.)

Issue: Local law enforcement training varies widely in California, meaning that officers aren’t always trained in how to test for drunk and drugged driving.

Proposed change: Increase DUI training for police officers who work traffic enforcement to ensure they are proficient in areas like sobriety testing and report writing.