USA TODAY International Edition
California to sue over ‘emergency’
White House maintains Trump has the authority
California’s Democratic Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Sunday that he will “definitely and imminently” file a lawsuit against the Trump administration to contest the declaration of a national emergency at the southern border.
President Donald Trump declared the emergency Friday after signing a funding bill that included less than a quarter of the money he had requested for the construction of a border barrier, which he said is necessary to stop illegal immigration.
Democrats such as Becerra said conditions at the border don’t constitute an emergency.
“It’s clear that this isn’t an emergency – it’s clear that in the mind of Donald Trump, he needs to do something to try to fulfill a campaign promise,” Becerra said in an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” The construction of a border wall has been a central issue for Trump since he first announced he was running for president in 2015.
Friday, Trump said the emergency declaration and a border wall was needed to combat what he characterized as an “invasion” of migrants across the southern border. He said open areas on the border allowed the free flow of drugs and dangerous criminals into the
USA. By declaring a national emergency, along with other measures and the $1.375 billion Congress did approve, Trump would have about $8 billion to spend on border barrier construction. .
White House adviser Stephen Miller, one of the chief architects of Trump’s immigration policies, pushed back at the idea that the president’s action was unconstitutional.
“Congress in 1976 passed the National Emergency Act and gave the president the authority, as a result of that, to invoke a national emergency in many different circumstances, but among them the use of military construction funds,” Miller said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“They didn’t refuse to appropriate it,” Miller said. “They passed a law specifically saying the president could have this authority. It’s in the plain statute. That’s the decision that Congress made, and if people don’t like that, they can address it.”
Opponents of a wall point to government statistics that show the number of border crossings annually has declined in recent years. They cite government data that show immigrants, including those who come legally, commit crimes at a lower frequency than U.S. citizens do and say a wall is unnecessary because most of the drugs and people cross at established points of entry. Friday, Trump said he did not find that data credible.
At least two lawsuits already have been filed in response to Trump’s emergency declaration. The liberal watchdog group Public Citizen filed a federal lawsuit Friday in Washington hours after Trump’s announcement. The group argues Trump exceeded his authority and disregarded the separation of powers outlined by the Constitution. The suit includes three Texas landowners whose property would be seized by the government through eminent domain to build part of the border barrier. A second lawsuit was filed by the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. It argues that the White House did not provide the supporting documents needed to justify the declaration.