Wartime Law Quietly Unleashed
The ruling didn’t just reinterpret an old statute; it shifted who the law imagines as an enemy.
By accepting that a gang with Venezuelan roots can be treated as a “hostile foreign organization,”
the court blessed the idea that a power once aimed across oceans can now be aimed down city blocks.
For some, that shift feels necessary, even overdue.
Violence that crosses borders, they argue, demands tools that can cross legal boundaries too.
But others see something darker taking shape.
Once the label of “enemy” can be pinned on a scattered, non-state group, the definition of threat becomes dangerously elastic.
Today it is a gang. Tomorrow, it could be a movement, a community, a belief.
The law has not changed its words, only its reach. The real battle will be over how far the next hand decides to extend it.
