Trump's 'National Emergency' Doesn't Exist, Except as an Assault on the Constitution
It's OK to take a moment to process the whiplash as some of those Constitutional Conservatives who once yelled about President Obama's "executive overreach" warmly embrace the prospect of Donald Trump, American president, declaring a "national emergency" to circumvent Congress. The constitutional scholars out there might point out this would be "a gross abuse of power" and "a blatant assault on the separation of powers," particularly because the emergency Trump declared Friday morning exists only in the addled brains of Fox News obsessives. Like, say, Donald Trump.
The Tangerine Generalissimo already shut down the government in an attempt to force the Legislative Branch to fund his Big, Beautiful Wall, which for years he promised, in no uncertain terms, that Mexico would pay for. He also said it would be concrete and 30 feet high and stretch from sea to shining sea. Instead, the Artful Dealmaker got 55 miles of steel "barrier" as his side got walloped in negotiations, and U.S. taxpayers are fronting the bill. (Whether Democrats should even have given that much up, even to keep the government open, is another question.) But Congress did not exercise its power of the purse-outlined in Article 1 of that "Constitution" we hear so much about-in a way that Trump liked, so he has decided to seize the funds by declaring a national emergency when there is none.
At least, there is no emergency with regard to a supposed surge of illegal immigration at our southern border.
The entire basis for declaring an emergency-that there are drugs and gangs and hordes of undocumented people pouring over the border in a World War Z invasion-is completely fabricated. It is not real. This is the key difference between this "national emergency" and the dozens of others that the geniuses on Fox & Friends and elsewhere have gleefully pointed out have been in effect for years. Those emergencies were declared in response to something that is happening in reality, with the intention of actually solving a real problem.
Just ask officials in the border town of El Paso, where Trump held a rally this week in which one of the Red Hats physically attacked a member of the free press. Trump has repeatedly lied about crime in El Paso-part of a larger propaganda campaign falsely linking immigration to crime-and officials there simply called him a liar and said there was no emergency. The fence put up there in 2008-2009 had no effect on crime. Another way you can tell is that Trump's White House has been discussing whether to declare the emergency for more than a month. The surest sign a situation is dire and pressing is that you can take your sweet time to respond. Should we pull the fire alarm? Hold up-let's release a couple of trial balloons in the press to see how this plays politically.
No, the actual crisis at the southern border is a humanitarian one. The dreaded Caravans, mostly consisting of people from the Central American nations of El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, have occasionally made their way-slowly-up through Mexico. These people, many of them women and children, travel together because the route is so dangerous and there is safety in numbers. They are fleeing gang and domestic violence in their home countries, where the rule of law has failed due to systemic corruption-some of which has roots in U.S. meddling there that goes back decades. They are seeking an asylum hearing, as is their right under international law and treaties to which the United States is a signatory, to determine whether each individual has a legitimate claim to being a refugee.
The Trump administration has, in pretty much every available way, made this situation worse. Particularly under Attorney General Jeff Sessions-who we were reminded this week is exactly who he appears to be-the administration waged war on the asylum process. Asylum-seekers ideally declare themselves to officials at ports of entry, so the administration has intermittently closed those entry points or dramatically slowed the rate of entry. Sessions sought to restrict the criteria for asylum claims, specifically to exclude the kinds of gang and domestic violence many Central American migrants say they are fleeing. Having made it difficult to apply at official border checkpoints, the Trump administration then sought to exclude anyone who crosses the border illegally from asylum consideration. This was rejected by a federal court.
The "national emergency" will not address any aspect of this crisis, at least if the funds Trump plans to unconstitutionally seize are reserved only for the Big, Beautiful Wall. One major obstacle border officials face is that most of the detention facilities down there were built to house single adults. In the 1990s and early 2000s-before illegal border crossings dropped precipitously to the rates they're at today-it was mostly male migrants who were seeking work, often temporarily, north of the border. The facilities, then, are not equipped to house families seeking asylum. The Obama administration began to build some family facilities, but also engaged in harsh tactics that drew criticism from immigrant rights' advocates. Then, of course, Trump came in and, soon enough, just started tearing those families apart through the "zero-tolerance" policy. Will Trump address this housing problem with the money he secures by assaulting Article 1 of the Constitution? Don't hold your breath.
All this is to say that Donald Trump, American president, has no desire to respond to an emergency at the southern border. He wants to make a big show of how hard he's fighting for the Big, Beautiful Wall, because its actual purpose is to serve as a Big, Beautiful Middle Finger From White America Monument. It is a purely political move to shore up his support with The Base, whom he seems to believe are the only Americans he truly represents as president. No wonder he has floated seizing the funds from response efforts to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico and the wildfires in California-actual crises, happening in reality, but which feel to his cohort like they affect only brown people and liberals. It's not enough to declare a fake emergency. You've got to Own the Libs.
No one believes The Wall will stop the flow of drugs. It will not stop the significant share of undocumented immigrants who arrive on airplanes and overstay their visas. It will not address the humanitarian crisis, as Central Americans flee their homelands out of visceral desperation and throw themselves at the feet of a country that once held itself up as a refuge for "your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore." None of that applies, so long as the huddled masses are brown, and the current president represents a White America lashing out at the changing world, inside and out, in a reckless spasm of fear and resentment.
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