U.S. SOVEREIGNTY & SECURITY DEPEND ON IT …
Congress is expected to approve a border security bill that grossly underfunds U.S. Homeland Security Department’s (DHS) funding request for barriers needed to close gaps in OUR porous southern border with Mexico. And President Trump is expected to sign it, avoiding another government shutdown.
However, DHS requested $5.7B for barriers, and Congress only appropriated $1.4B, a $4.3B shortfall.
President Trump is considering declaring a national emergency that would allow him to shift previously budgeted monies to compensate for the funding shortfall.
As DHS has proposed, the additional funds acquired via national emergency, when combined with funds already provided in FY 2017, FY 2018 and the new bill in FY2019, will allow DHS to construct more than 330 miles of steel slatted barriers in the U.S. Border Patrol’s highest priority locations:
- ~5 miles in San Diego Sector in California
- ~14 miles in El Centro Sector in California
- ~27 miles in Yuma Sector in Arizona
- ~9 miles in El Paso Sector in New Mexico
- ~55 miles in Laredo Sector in Texas
- ~104 miles in Rio Grande Valley Sector in Texas
According to Fox News, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell “supports Trump declaring a national emergency to fund the border wall.” But Democrats in Congress said they hoped Trump wouldn’t declare an emergency. “It’s a terrible idea,” said Delaware Sen. Chris Coons. “We will all live to regret this one.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, told reporters that Democrats “are reviewing our options.” The White House said, “There shouldn’t be legal challenges. We are very prepared but there shouldn’t be. The president is doing his job and Congress should do theirs.”
Trump believes there is a crisis at our southern border — increasing human trafficking, drug smuggling, criminal, gang and terrorist infiltration, illegal immigration, migrant caravans, etc — which justify the declaration of a national emergency. Keeping the country safe is Trump’s # 1 priority as President of the United States.
So what’s the big deal about declaring a national emergency?
As reported by ABC News, “the Federal Register says 58 national emergencies have been declared since the National Emergency Act of 1976 was signed into law by President Gerald Ford, and 31 have been annually renewed and are currently still in effect.” (Click here to read details about each one.)
We reviewed that list and classified the national emergency declarations into seven categories:
All of these national emergencies were enacted to protect Americans, some with immediate impact while others were expected to provide benefits in the long run.
President Trump’s new national emergency declaration would give DHS and our border patrol agents the means to immediately address a humanitarian and security crisis.
And, yes, Speaker Pelosi, there really is a crisis …
Consider these facts (some of which were summarized in recent articles by Investor’s Business Daily and Cleveland Plain Dealer):
- More than half a million people were apprehended trying to get into the country illegally in 2018, more than 100,000 people in October and November alone.
- 163,045 people were apprehended trying to cross the southwestern US border together as a family in 2018, a 229% increase from 2017.
- 405 people died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018, according to the International Organization for Migration.
- 104,000 illegals made it into the country in 2018.
- Between 12 million to 22 million illegal immigrants are already in our country. The nonpartisan ProCon.org found that in 2010 almost 4% of the U.S. population was in the country illegally. The average for four other countries, France (0.9%), Germany (0.3%), Spain (0.8%) and the Netherlands (0.5%), was just 0.625%.
- The Center for Immigration Studies looked at federal crime statistics and found that non-citizens accounted for more than 20% of federal convictions, even though they make up just 8.4% of the population.
- Texas reports that from 2011 to 2018, it charged 186,000 illegal aliens with a total of 292,000 crimes, including 539 murders, 32,000 assaults, 3,426 sexual assaults, and almost 3,000 weapons charges.
- A March 2011 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report (page 21) estimated that 25,000 criminal aliens had been arrested for homicide — that’s at least 25,000 Americans dead because of people in the country illegally. They also found that 75% of criminal aliens were arrested in one of three border states—California, Texas and Arizona.
- Every year, according to Conservative Review, ICE apprehends illegal aliens responsible for roughly 80,000 DUIs, 76,000 other traffic offenses, 76,000 drug offenses, and 50,000 assaults.
- According to data released by the Center for Disease Control (CDC), 70,237 Americans died of drug overdose in 2017, representing nearly a 10% increase. Similar numbers are expected in 2018. (As a point of reference, there were 58,220 American soldiers killed during the entire Vietnam War.) The rate of drug overdose deaths involving heroin and synthetic opioids such as fentanyl has been increasing rapidly (see chart below). And 90% of heroin and fentanyl is smuggled through the southern border.
OK, so there is a crisis, but isn’t Trump’s plan to declare a national emergency a bit drastic?
While past presidents did not declare an emergency to reallocate funds, they certainly considered the border a national security issue and treated it accordingly:
- REAGAN (1982): “The ongoing migration of persons to the United States in violation of our laws is a serious national problem detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
- CLINTON (1995): “All Americans … are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country … Our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders.”
- BUSH (2006): “Securing the U.S. border is a basic responsibility of a sovereign nation. It is also an urgent requirement of our national security.”
- OBAMA (2005): “We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked.”
Is Trump’s emergency declaration and reallocation of funds legal? John Yoo, Emanuel S. Heller Professor of Law at the University of California at Berkeley, writes in a recent article in National Review, that “The law will be on Trump’s side if he declares an emergency to fund his wall. Congress has authorized a wall and other security measures at the border, it has not passed any law forbidding such a wall, and the president has invoked delegated powers to continue the wall’s construction. Congress has also passed at least two laws that give the president the power to transfer funds to a construction project, such as a wall, after a declaration of emergency: Section 2808 of Title 10 and Section 2293 of Title 33 of the U.S. Code.” Yoo predicts that the Supreme Court, if called upon, would almost certainly agree that presidents not only have constitutional authority to declare emergencies, but Congress has given them the right to re-allocate spending to support such a declaration.
The Bottom Line: We have a humanitarian and security crisis at our southern border. If DHS needs $5.7B+ to fund a combination of border barriers, infrastructure, technology and additional law enforcement personnel to stop drugs and illegal aliens from crossing our borders, and if Congress fails to allocate the resources they need, and if the President can legally shift the necessary funds their way, then we support President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency.