Donald Trump sued over national emergency declaration

On Friday 15 February, President Donald Trump declared a national emergency to secure funding for a wall along the southern border with Mexico. Within hours, several organisations had filed lawsuits against the decision, including Public Citizen and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. Trying to regain momentum after losing a grinding two-month battle with lawmakers over funding the wall, Trump asserted that the flow of drugs, criminals and illegal immigrants from Mexico constituted a profound threat to national security that justified unilateral action.
The national emergency and other measures will free up $8 billion – more than the $5.7 billion he initially demanded – to free up funding for 234 miles of bollard wall, the White House said. There have been 59 other national emergency declarations under the 1976 Act but none involving a president seeking funds denied him by Congress.
Most Americans oppose the emergency declaration, according to polls. One released this week by Fox News found 56 per cent against it, including 20 per cent of Republicans.

“This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process,” Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said in a joint statement.

“We will have a national emergency, and we will then be sued,” Trump said during Friday’s statement and later that day the liberal watchdog group Public Citizen filed a federal lawsuit in the District of Columbia. The suit also includes three Texas landowners who are located along the southern border, who were told their property would be seized for a border wall if money was allocated to the project this year. The lawsuit argues that Trump exceeded his powers by declaring an emergency and was a clear violation of the separation of powers.


Another federal lawsuit was filed by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a prominent government watchdog group, but the litigation targets the Justice Department and revolves around a Freedom of Information Act request regarding the emergency order. These two suits are just the beginning as a barrage of organisations and officials have pledged to fight this in court.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff told CNN that “The risk that the President takes, the risk to future Presidencies, is that we limit the President’s power to act when it really is necessary,” Schiff said. “But this president doesn’t care about future presidents, he only cares about himself.”

In his State of the Union address, Trump warned the southern border was soon due for a “tremendous onslaught” because “organised caravans are on the march to the United States.” He added that the “lawless state of our southern border is a threat to the safety, security, and financial well‑being of all Americans.”
In fact, apprehensions of undocumented foreigners at the southern US border are at the lowest levels since the early 1970s. The 403,479 apprehended in 2018, was slightly higher than apprehensions in 2017, but significantly lower than the 1.67 million apprehended in 2000 or the more than 1 million per year throughout the 1990s.

Tom Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, told NPR in 2017 that “the border’s under better control than it has been in 45 years.”


Trump’s election promise to build a wall has proved difficult to fulfil. On 22 December, Trump’s demand for funding caused the US government to shutdown, which continued longer than any in American history and left over 800,000 workers without a paycheque for several weeks.