Battling with one branch of government and opening a new confrontation with another, U.S. President Donald Trump announced Friday he's declaring a national emergency to fulfil his pledge to construct a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Bypassing Congress, which approved far less money for his proposed wall than he had sought, Trump said he would use executive action to siphon billions of dollars from federal military construction and counter-drug efforts for the wall, aides said. The move is already drawing bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill and expected to face rounds of legal challenges.
Trump spoke Friday from the Rose Garden at the White House in Washington, and claimed illegal immigration is "an invasion of our country."
The two top Democrats in Congress said they'll use "every remedy available" to oppose the declaration.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said Friday they'll take action "in the Congress, in the courts and in the public."
"This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process."
Influential Republican senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chair of the body's judiciary committee, said on social media he stood "firmly behind President Trump's decision to use executive powers to build the wall-barriers we desperately need."
Graham on Thursday said the president had "all the legal authority in the world to do this."
Hoping for a 'fair shake' in the courts
Shortly before Trump spoke, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce — a reliable supporter of Republicans in recent decades — used social media to urge the president to refrain from declaring a national emergency, saying it "will create a dangerous precedent" and threatens "to usurp the powers of Congress."
Trump admitted the decision will be challenged and work its way through the courts, including up to the U.S. Supreme Court.
"Hopefully we'll get a fair shake," he said.
In a rare show of bipartisanship, lawmakers voted Thursday to fund large swaths of the government and avoid a repeat of the recent, debilitating five-week government shutdown. The money in the bill for border barriers, about $1.4 billion US, is far below the $5.7 billion Trump insisted he needed and would finance just a quarter of the 322 kilometres he wanted this year.
The Senate passed the legislation 83-16 Thursday, with both parties solidly aboard. The House followed with a 300-128 tally.
Central American immigrants line up to register with Mexican Immigration officials at a shelter in Piedras Negras, Mexico, on Feb. 5. They are part of the latest caravan of migrants, camped in Piedras Negras, just west of Eagle Pass, Texas. (Jerry Lara/The San Antonio Express-News via AP)
Trump signalled his intent to sign off on the bill, but has not done so yet.
The agreement, which took bargainers three weeks to strike, would also squeeze funding for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in an attempt to pressure the agency to detain fewer immigrants. To the dismay of Democrats, however, it would still leave an agency many of them consider abusive holding thousands more immigrants than last year.
The measure contains money for improved surveillance equipment, more customs agents and humanitarian aid for detained immigrants. The overall bill also provides $330 billion to finance dozens of federal programs for the rest of the year, one-fourth of federal agency budgets.
To bridge the gap, the White House earlier Friday said Trump will be spending roughly $8 billion on border barriers — combining the money approved by Congress with funding he plans to repurpose through executive actions, including the national emergency. The money is expected to come from funds targeted for military construction and counter-drug efforts, but aides could not immediately specify which military projects would be affected.
The contents of Trump's speech on Friday echoed appeals he made during the 35-day partial government shutdown, including a prime-time address from the White House that was televised on most networks.
Stats about drug seizures 'just a lie': Trump
Trump sparked the last partial shutdown before Christmas after Democrats snubbed his $5.7-billion demand for the wall. The closure denied paycheques to 800,000 federal wokers, harmed contractors and people reliant on government services, and was loathed by the public.
But Trump seemed to go further at times, challenging the government's own data that the majority of drugs crossing from the southern border do so at ports of entry.
"It's just a lie," Trump said of those claims.
When challenged by a reporter to provide sources for his counterclaim, Trump said, "I get them from a lot of places … from Homeland Security."
Trump also seemed to doubt the statistics from U.S. customs officials indicating that illegal crossing apprehensions are a fraction of their total in the 1990s and early this century. Later, he said the numbers were only going down because of the work of his administration, seemingly undercutting his rationale for an emergency.
Despite widespread opposition in Congress to proclaiming an emergency, including by some Republicans, Trump was responding to pressure to act unilaterally to soothe his conservative base and avoid appearing as if he's lost his wall battle.
Trump expressed admiration for conservative commentators Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, but said they don't determine White House policy.
Emergency declarations usually narrowly defined
Democratic state attorneys general said they would consider legal action to block Trump. Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rossello told the president on Twitter "we'll see you in court" if he makes the declaration.
Even if his emergency declaration withstands challenge, Trump is still billions of dollars short of his overall funding needed to build the wall as he promised in 2016. After two years of effort, Trump has not added any new border mileage; all the construction so far has gone to replacing and repairing existing structures. Ground is expected to be broken in South Texas soon on the first new mileage.
The White House said Trump would not try to redirect federal disaster aid to the wall, a proposal they had considered but rejected over fears of a political blowback.
The National Emergencies Act was passed by Congress in 1976 and has been used dozens of time since by presidents from both parties, but usually for narrowly defined cases.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/trump-border-wall-funding-national-emergency-1.5020813