A US federal appeals judge has delivered a scathing assessment of the Trump administration’s mass deportation of Venezuelan migrants, declaring that even Nazis received more legal protections.

“Nazis got better treatment under the Alien Enemies Act than has happened here,” U.S. Circuit Judge Patricia Millett said during a heated hearing Monday at the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals

On March 15, President Donald Trump’s administration invoked the rarely-used 1798 Alien Enemies Act to deport over 200 Venezuelans to El Salvador, claiming they were members of the Tren de Aragua gang. The migrants were swiftly loaded onto planes and sent to an El Salvadoran prison facility, where they remain under a $6 million deal between the U.S. and President Nayib Bukele’s government.

Immediately afterward, U.S. District Judge James Boasberg issued a two-week ban on further use of the Alien Enemies Act, saying migrants deserve hearings to contest gang allegations before being deported.

The dusty 1798 statute had been invoked just three times in U.S. history before the Trump administration revived it, last applied during World War II against Japanese, German and Italian immigrants.

After listening to arguments to reinstate the order from Deputy Assistant Attorney General Drew Ensign on Monday, Judge Millett criticized the lack of due process given to the Venezuelans who were deported.

“There’s no regulations, and nothing was adopted by the agency officials that were administering this. These people weren’t given notice. They weren’t told where they were going. They were given those people on those planes on that Saturday and had no opportunity to file habeas or any type of action to challenge the removal under the AEA,” she said. “What’s factually wrong about what I said?”

Ensign in turn argued that the courts have no right to review the president’s use of wartime powers, calling judicial intervention “utterly unprecedented.”

“Well, this is an unprecedented action as well,” Millett responded. “No president has ever used this statute this way.”

If the D.C. Circuit decides to uphold the ban, the administration likely will push the case to the Supreme Court, where Trump’s three appointments during his first term have established a solid conservative majority.