Politics|Trump declared an emergency at the southern border. Here’s what that means.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/20/us/politics/trump-border-emergency-declaration-immigration.html
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Invoking presidential emergency powers gives the president the ability to go around Congress and unlock federal funding to crack down at the border.
President Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border on Monday, invoking special presidential powers that allow him to unilaterally unlock federal funding for border wall construction and potentially to deploy the military and National Guard to the border.
Mr. Trump took a similar step during his first term as a way to circumvent Congress and access billions of dollars that lawmakers refused to approve to build a wall along the border with Mexico. He once again empowered the military to support the Border Patrol with logistical planning, drone support and help procuring detention space.
But in a separate order, Mr. Trump appeared to go further by giving the military a specific responsibility over immigration enforcement. During Mr. Trump’s first term, the military only supported immigration authorities but did not apprehend migrants. Mr. Trump now directed the Defense Department to come up with a plan in 30 days “to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion, including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”
While details on the exact plans remained unclear, the directive for the military could run afoul of laws that limit the use of regular federal troops for domestic policing purposes.
Declaring a national emergency broadens Trump’s powers.
As he did in his first term, Mr. Trump relied on the National Emergencies Act, a post-Watergate law that allows the president to declare a national emergency, which enhances his executive powers. The act was intended to enable the federal government to respond quickly to a crisis by creating exemptions to rules that would normally constrain the president.
“The president has a pretty wide latitude in determining what constitutes a national emergency,” said Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University. “If they say it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, well, unless the courts say otherwise, it’s a duck.”
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