A federal judge on Thursday barred the Trump administration from deporting any Venezuelans from South Texas under an 18th-century wartime law and said President Donald Trump’s invocation of it was “unlawful.”

U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr. is the first judge to rule that the Alien Enemies Act cannot be used against people who, the Republican administration claims, are gang members invading the United States. Rodriguez said he wouldn’t interfere with the government’s right to deport people in the country illegally through other means, but it could not rely on the 227-year-old law to do so.

“Neither the Court nor the parties question that the Executive Branch can direct the detention and removal of aliens who engage in criminal activity in the United States,” wrote Rodriguez, who was nominated by Trump in 2018. But, the judge said, “the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and is contrary to the plain, ordinary meaning of the statute’s terms.”

In March, Trump issued a proclamation claiming that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua was invading the U.S. He said he had special powers to deport immigrants, identified by his administration as gang members, without the usual court proceedings.

“The Court concludes that the President’s invocation of the AEA through the Proclamation exceeds the scope of the statute and, as a result, is unlawful,” Rodriguez wrote.

In an interview on Fox News, Vice President JD Vance said the administration will be “aggressively appealing” the ruling and others that hem in the president’s deportation power.

“The judge doesn’t make that determination, whether the Alien Enemies Act can be deployed,” Vance said. “I think the president of the United States is the one who determines whether this country is being invaded.”

The chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, Rep. Adriano Espaillat, D-N.Y., said in a statement the judge had made clear “what we all knew to be true: The Trump administration illegally used the Alien Enemies Act to deport people without due process.”

The Alien Enemies Act has only been used three times before in U.S. history, most recently during World War II, when it was cited to intern Japanese-Americans.

The proclamation triggered a flurry of litigation as the administration tried to ship migrants it claimed were gang members to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

Rodriguez’s ruling is significant because it is the first formal permanent injunction against the administration using the AEA and contends the president is misusing the law. “Congress never meant for this law to be used in this manner,” said Lee Gelernt, the ACLU lawyer who argued the case, in response to the ruling.

Rodriguez agreed, noting that the provision has only been used during the two World Wars and the War of 1812. Trump claimed Tren de Aragua was acting at the behest of the Venezuelan government, but Rodriguez found that the activities the administration accused it of did not amount to an invasion or “predatory incursion,” as the statute requires.

“The Proclamation makes no reference to and in no manner suggests that a threat exists of an organized, armed group of individuals entering the United States at the direction of Venezuela to conquer the country or assume control over a portion of the nation,” Rodriguez wrote. “Thus, the Proclamation’s language cannot be read as describing conduct that falls within the meaning of ‘invasion’ for purposes of the AEA.”

If the administration appeals, it would go first to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. That is among the nation’s most conservative appeals courts and it also has ruled against what it saw as overreach on immigration matters by both the Obama and Biden administrations. In those cases, Democratic administrations had sought to make it easier for immigrants to remain in the U.S.

The administration, as it has in other cases challenging its expansive view of presidential power, could turn to appellate courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, in the form of an emergency motion for a stay pending an appeal.

The Supreme Court already has weighed in once on the issue of deportations under the AEA. The justices held that migrants alleged to be gang members must be given “reasonable time” to contest their removal from the country. The court has not specified the length of time.

It’s possible that the losing side in the 5th Circuit would file an emergency appeal with the justices that also would ask them to short-circuit lower court action in favor of a definitive ruling from the nation’s highest court. Such a decision likely would be months away, at least.

The Texas case is just one piece of a tangle of litigation sparked by Trump’s proclamation.

Social media company Meta said Monday that it will start using publicly available content from European users to train its artificial intelligence models, resuming work put on hold last year after activists raised concerns about data privacy.

The company, which owns Facebook and Instagram, said that it would train its AI systems using public posts and comments shared by adult users in the 27-nation European Union.

“People’s interactions with Meta AI — like questions and queries — will also be used to train and improve our models,” the company said in a blog post.

Meta is making the move after launching its Meta AI assistant last month for European users, long after it rolled out to the United States and other major markets.

The company’s AI training efforts had been hampered by stringent European Union data privacy laws, which give people control over how their personal information is used. Vienna-based group NOYB, led by activist Max Schrems, had complained to various national privacy watchdogs about Meta’s AI training plans and urged them to stop the company before it started training its next generation of AI models.

Meta noted that a panel of EU privacy regulators in December “affirmed” that its original approach met legal obligations. The company said it won’t use private messages to train its AI model and repeated its point that it is merely following the example of rivals Google and OpenAI, “both of which have already used data from European users to train their AI models.”

Meta said it will start notifying users in the EU about the training, and will include a link to a form where they can object at any time.

A court formally arrested the mayor of Istanbul, a key rival to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on Sunday and ordered him jailed pending the outcome of a trial on corruption charges.

Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu was detained following a raid on his residence earlier this week, sparking the largest wave of street demonstrations in Turkey in more than a decade. It also deepened concerns over democracy and rule of law in Turkey.

His imprisonment is widely regarded as a political move to remove a major contender from the next presidential race, currently scheduled for 2028. Government officials reject the accusations and insist that Turkey’s courts operate independently.

The prosecutor’s office said the court decided to jail Imamoglu on suspicion of running a criminal organization, accepting bribes, extortion, illegally recording personal data and bid-rigging. A request for him to be imprisoned on terror-related charges was rejected although he still faces prosecution. Following the court’s ruling, Imamoglu was transferred to Silivri prison, west of Istanbul.

The Interior Ministry later announced that Imamoglu had been suspended from duty as a “temporary measure.” The municipality had previously appointed an acting mayor from its governing council.

Alongside Imamoglu, 47 other people were also jailed pending trial, including a key aide and two district mayors from Istanbul, one of whom was replaced with a government appointee. A further 44 suspects were released under judicial control.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said Sunday that 323 people were detained the previous evening over disturbances at protests.

Largely peaceful protests across Turkey have seen hundreds of thousands come out in support of Imamoglu. However, there has been some violence, with police deploying water cannons, tear gas, pepper spray and firing plastic pellets at protesters in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, some of whom hurled stones, fireworks and other missiles at riot police.

The formal arrest came as more than 1.5 million members of the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP, began holding a primary presidential election to endorse Imamoglu, the sole candidate.

The party has also set up symbolic ballot boxes nationwide to allow people who are not party members to express their support for the mayor. Large crowds gathered early Sunday to cast a “solidarity ballot.”

“This is no longer just a problem of the Republican People’s Party, but a problem of Turkish democracy,” Fusun Erben, 69, said at a polling station in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district. “We do not accept our rights being so easily usurped. We will fight until the end.”

Speaking at a polling station in Bodrum, western Turkey, engineer Mehmet Dayanc, 38, said he feared that “in the end we’ll be like Russia, a country without an opposition, where only a single man participates in elections.”

In a message posted on social media, Imamoglu called on people to show “their struggle for democracy and justice to the entire world” at the ballot box. He warned Erdogan that he would be defeated by “our righteousness, our courage, our humility, our smiling face.”

“Honestly, we are embarrassed in the name of our legal system,” Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavas, a fellow member of Imamoglu’s CHP, told reporters after casting his vote, criticizing the lack of confidentiality in the proceedings.

CHP leader Ozgur Ozel said Imamoglu’s imprisonment was reminiscent of “Italian mafia methods.” Speaking at Istanbul City Hall, he added: “Imamoglu is on the one hand in prison and on the other hand on the way to the presidency.”

The Council of Europe, which focuses on promoting human rights and democracy, slammed the decision and demanded Imamoglu’s immediate release.