Congress has delegated to the President the authority, during a declared war or by proclamation, to provide for the restriction, internment or removal of
enemy aliens deemed dangerous.
On February 19, Roosevelt, under intense pressure from the War Department, issued the controversial Executive Order 9066, which established restricted "military areas"--wide swaths of land near vulnerable coastlines, power plants, and military outposts--from which
enemy aliens could legally be removed.
Although the inability of an
enemy alien to sue had a long pedigree in the common law, it was not until World War I that the English courts decided that an
enemy alien could be sued, thereby producing the asymmetry.
30) These are unlawful alien combatants but not technically
enemy aliens since they do not represent any country with which the United States is at war.
Aiming "to provoke a debate on a sacrosanct subject that has remained undebatable for far too long," Malkin "challenges the religiously held belief that internment of
enemy aliens and the West Coast evacuation and relocation of ethnic Japanese were primarily the result of 'wartime hysteria' and 'race prejudice.
The court of appeals, in supporting its conclusion that the German prisoners had the right, found that although it could cite no statutory jurisdiction for such cases where an
enemy alien is entitled to the writ, "courts must be held to possess it as part of the judicial power of the United States[, and] that where an individual is deprived of liberty by an official act occur[ing] outside the territorial jurisdiction of any District Court, the petition will lie in the District Court which has territorial jurisdiction over officials who have directive power over the immediate jailer.
at 763), and that whoever "joins the forces of an
enemy alien surrenders th[e] right to constitutional protections" (265 F.
Consider the purported connection between the
Enemy Alien Act and the Japanese internments of the Second World War.
Karl Muck: Anti-German Hysteria and
Enemy Alien Internment During World War I," Undergraduate Thesis, Harvard University, 1994, 23- 24, 27.
On the outbreak of war, he was interned as an
enemy alien and wasn't released until October 1940.
In December 1861, the Texas Legislature debated a resolution "asking how far, if at all, the Confederate government can go in confiscating
enemy alien property, consistent with State Rights.
Despite Kandinsky's absences, this house remained the couple's base until the outbreak of war, when Kandinsky used his status as an
enemy alien to leave Munter and return to Russia.
