Trump may invoke emergency powers over border wall
Here’s how other world leaders have used the authority
On Friday, President Donald Trump announced he would consider going to new extremes in order to build his long-discussed border wall. He would do it, he said, even if it meant declaring a national emergency.
“I can do it if I want — absolutely,” he said, claiming he didn’t need congressional approval to build the wall. “We can call a national emergency because of the security of our country. We can call a national emergency and build it very quickly.”
But as The Washington Post reported Friday, “legal experts said Trump’s emergency powers under federal law are limited and expressed doubt that such an avenue would solve a mounting political dilemma.”
Leaders often invoke emergency powers to handle natural disasters and other crises that require immediate attention. U.S. presidents have regularly declared national emergencies in the past, including after the Sept. 11 attacks. Such declarations are also common abroad. In recent years, foreign leaders also have found ways to use states of emergency to broaden their own powers or clamp down on dissent — occasionally for years at a time. Here are just a few examples.
Turkey, after a 2016 coup attempt
After a coup attempt in July 2016 that left 250 people dead, Turkey declared a state of emergency, vastly expanding President Recep Tayyip Erdogan powers.
Then it was extended again and again.
Over the course of two years, as the state of emergency remained in place, some 160,000 people were detained, including journalists and academics. The United Nations Human Rights office said last year that almost the same number of civil servants were sacked in that time period. Some aspects of Ankara’s crackdown during the state of emergency could be called “collective punishment,” the U.N. said, noting
that the emergency powers led to the torture of some detainees.
Turkey’s Foreign Ministry claimed that the U.N. made “unfounded allegations matching up perfectly with the propaganda efforts of terrorist organizations.”
France in 2015 after terrorist attacks
France implemented a state of emergency overnight in 2015 after a series of terrorist attacks shocked the nation and left 130 people
dead. The sweeping new powers gave French authorities the ability to expand their counterterrorism efforts. Amnesty International said in a 2016 report that under the expanded powers, authorities could “search houses, businesses and places of worship” without judicial authorization. The rights group noted that France was “certainly confronted with an exceptional and unprecedented situation” after the violent and deadly attacks that prompted the
emergency measures to begin with. But the watchdog group said that the large number of searches and low number of criminal investigations raised “serious questions about the extent to which they were necessary and proportionate.”
The group said it “interviewed many Muslims who believed that the measures against them were motivated by their religious beliefs and practice.”
French authorities repeatedly justified the extension of the emergency powers as a reasonable means by which to foil attacks on French soil.
Venezuela, economic and political crisis
In 2016, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro declared a state of emergency, claiming that both the United States and actors within Venezuela were plotting to overthrow him. The opposition claimed the move was unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court upheld Maduro’s decision.
The state of emergency was extended multiple times as Venezuela submerged further into an economic and humanitarian crisis that prompted millions of Venezuelans to flee home. Maduro will be inaugurated for another term this week, and 13 nations issued a statement Friday announcing they will not recognize his new term as legitimate.
Egypt, 2017 terrorism
In 2017, after around 45 people were killed in church bombings in Egypt, President Abdel Fatah alSissi declared a state of emergency there, and it has been extended for three-month periods at a time ever since.
Human Rights Watch has warned that there has been “near-absolute impunity for abuses by security forces” in Egypt. The watchdog group reported that there have been disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings and seizure of assets without due process.
“The 1958 Emergency Law gives unchecked powers to security forces to arrest and detain and allows the government to impose media censorship and order forced evictions,” the group said.
And in October, the Egyptian parliament voted to extend the state of emergency yet again.