The decision to let the executive order stand doesn’t just stretch the law; it rearranges the ground beneath it. By accepting that a Venezuelan-rooted gang can count as a “hostile foreign organization,” the court allowed a statute built for open war to be turned inward, onto streets and neighborhoods where the enemies don’t wear uniforms and the conflict has no clear front line.

For those who see the gang’s violence as borderless and escalating, this feels like overdue recognition of reality: that power must move as fast as the threat. Yet for others, the ruling glows like a warning flare. If an old wartime law can be awakened for this group, what stops a future administration from naming the next “enemy” by ideology, by origin, or by fear? The precedent is now written. The true test will come with whoever wields it next.