Citing Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution, the proclamation says it would allow ‘certain emergency tools’ to block illegal immigrants.
President Donald Trump on Monday declared a national emergency over what he called “an invasion” at the U.S.–Mexico border.
The White House on Monday night said in a proclamation that the Trump administration has a legal basis for the actions because the level of illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and criminal activity amounts to “an invasion under Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution of the United States.”
“I have determined that the current state of the southern border reveals that the Federal Government has failed in fulfilling this obligation to the States and hereby declare that an invasion is ongoing at the southern border, which requires the Federal Government to take measures to fulfill its obligation to the States,” Trump said in the proclamation.
That declaration will give his office “certain emergency tools,” including allowing for the suspension of “entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate” under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
Over the past four years, the order said, “The sheer number of aliens entering the United States has overwhelmed the system and rendered many of the INA’s provisions ineffective, including those previously described that are intended to prevent aliens posing threats to public health, safety, and national security from entering the United States.”
There are now millions of illegal immigrants in the United States “who potentially pose significant threats to health, safety, and national security” who have “moved into communities nationwide,” it further said.
The proclamation on Monday was one of many by Trump related to illegal immigration.
In a separate order released by the White House, Trump declared that the United States’ “sovereignty is under attack” and that the southern border is being “overrun by cartels, criminal gangs, known terrorists, human traffickers, smugglers, unvetted military-age males from foreign adversaries,” and drugs that harm Americans.
Explaining why an emergency must be declared, Trump said that “widespread chaos and suffering” has been inflicted on American citizens by illegal immigrants.
The president then said that the U.S. Armed Forces must “take all appropriate action to assist the Department of Homeland Security in obtaining full operational control of the southern border” under the emergency order.
Other orders include directing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico and finishing the wall along the U.S.–Mexico border, a key campaign promise from Trump’s 2016 White House bid.
Other orders launched sweeping new strategies, including an effort to end automatic citizenship, known as birthright citizenship, for anyone born of noncitizen parents in America, as well as discontinuing a Biden-era app known as CBP One used by nearly a million migrants to enter America.
Minutes after Trump was sworn into office, the website for CBP One said the app would no longer be used to serve that function. Previously existing appointments were canceled.
“I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted, and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places in which they came,” Trump said in his inauguration speech at the U.S. Capitol on Monday.
Other actions include declaring Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, a move that could open up the possibility of U.S. military intervention in Latin America. The executive order highlighted the Mexican cartels as well as transnational criminal gangs such as MS-13 of El Salvador and the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
On Monday, a handful of groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over his birthright citizenship order, claiming the move was overreach.
“Denying citizenship to U.S.-born children is not only unconstitutional—it’s also a reckless and ruthless repudiation of American values,” the ACLU’s director, Anthony Romero, said in a statement.
“Birthright citizenship is part of what makes the United States the strong and dynamic nation that it is. This order seeks to repeat one of the gravest errors in American history, by creating a permanent subclass of people born in the U.S. who are denied full rights as Americans.”
Before Trump took office, the ACLU said that it would be filing numerous legal challenges against executive orders that he had previewed.