A federal judge on Tuesday extended her order barring the government from removing non-citizens accused of being “alien enemies” from Colorado, concluding the authority invoked by the Trump administration is likely unlawful.

Two weeks ago, U.S. District Court Judge Charlotte N. Sweeney issued a temporary restraining order in a case brought by two detained Venezuelan men on behalf of themselves and all others subject to President Donald Trump’s proclamation invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798. In the March 14 proclamation, Trump initiated a process to summarily remove non-citizens, over the age of 14, accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang.

While her 14-day order was in effect, attorneys for the detainees and for the government argued whether Sweeney should grant a longer-term preliminary injunction while the dispute over the legality of Trump’s proclamation unfolds. Relying largely on her reasoning and conclusions from earlier, Sweeney, an appointee of Joe Biden, once again found the petitioners would likely succeed.

“Petitioners have now adduced evidence demonstrating the harm they and class members face should they be deported under the Proclamation,” she wrote in the May 6 order. “For example, that detention conditions in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), create a tremendous risk of extreme physical harm.”

Consequently, she barred the government from “detaining, transferring, or removing” people from Colorado who are subject to Trump’s proclamation, while leaving deportations under the routine immigration process unaffected.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado declined to comment.

“The court has again affirmed what we have always known to be true: Deporting and disappearing people without notice or due process is cruel, unconscionable and unlawful,” said Tim Macdonald, ACLU of Colorado legal director, who is litigating the case. “The federal government cannot misuse the Alien Enemies Act, a two-centuries-old law that was passed in 1798 to provide narrow wartime powers and has only been used three times in our country’s history. No one, including the federal government, is above the law.”

The Colorado litigation is one of several similar cases currently moving forward. Last week, U.S. District Court Judge Fernando Rodriguez Jr., a first-term Trump appointee in the Southern District of Texas, became the first to permanently block the government from using the Alien Enemies Act to remove Venezuelan citizens from that jurisdiction.

The two named petitioners in the Colorado case, D.B.U. and R.M.M., alleged they are detained Venezuelan nationals who have incorrectly been labeled as members of TdA. One of the men alleged he, in fact, “lives in fear of the gang” because the group killed two of his family members.

They filed under a legal tool known as “habeas corpus,” which challenges a person’s convictions or confinement as unlawful. The Supreme Court decided by 5-4 last month that a habeas action in the place of detention was the required approach.

The U.S. Department of Justice argued that Sweeney should reject the request for a preliminary injunction on multiple grounds. First, the named petitioners were not “currently subject to the Proclamation,” so they could not represent the class of people potentially affected by it.

Second, the government maintained the designation of suspected TdA members as “alien enemies” is “the President’s call alone; the federal courts have no role to play.”

“Here, there is no question that TdA members, which are aligned with (the) Nicolas Maduro regime, have entered into the United States with nefarious goals: trafficking in substances and people, committing violent crimes, subverting public safety, and conducting its business with interests antithetical to those of the United States,” the Justice Department wrote.

Attorneys for the petitioners sought to cast doubt on those assertions. They noted the government has only committed to giving alleged “alien enemies” 12 hours’ notice of their removals — 24 hours if they intend to file a habeas petition — and each of the named petitioners has been accused of being a TdA member in their parallel immigration proceedings. Meanwhile, the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed that courts can adjudicate the executive branch’s application of the Alien Enemies Act.

The attorneys also attached multiple declarations from experts familiar with TdA, who attested that Trump’s assertions about TdA’s scope, characteristics and entanglement with the Venezuelan government were inaccurate.

“The profile of suspected TdA crimes in the United States do not indicate a systemic criminal enterprise. Rather, the vast majority of arrests of suspected TdA members in the United States have been for crimes like shoplifting and cell phone robbery — crimes commonly handled by police departments,” wrote Rebecca Hanson, a professor at the University of Florida.

In Colorado, local authorities alleged that gang members were involved in an Aurora home invasion and kidnapping last year. A property management company also said TdA “took over” apartment buildings.

In her decision, Sweeney rebuked the notion that she had no authority to review the executive branch’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act.

“This sentence staggers. It is wrong as a matter of law and attempts to read an entire provision out of the Constitution,” she wrote. “Federal courts and judicial review are a feature — not a defect — of this Nation’s constitutional structure.”

To the argument that Sweeney could not assess whether the proclamation properly adhered to the Alien Enemies Act, she responded in one word: “Nonsense.”

As for whether Trump’s proclamation could properly rely upon the 18th Century wartime law, Sweeney determined the text of the law — referring to “any invasion or predatory incursion” by “any foreign nation or government” — did not encompass TdA. In doing so, she relied on the reasoning of Rodriguez, the Texas judge who analyzed the issue previously.

In a separate order, Sweeney also green-lit the habeas case to proceed as a class action on behalf of all detained non-citizens in Colorado who are encompassed by Trump’s proclamation. She acknowledged the government considers neither of the named petitioners “alien enemies,” but simultaneously, it has “suggested in immigration proceedings that D.B.U. has a gang affiliation, and R.M.M. is an associate or active TdA member,” she wrote.

The case is D.B.U. et al. v. Trump et al.