The Trump emergency will spend a lot of time in the courts

President Donald Trump on Friday declared the state of national emergency along the southern border and predicted that his government will eventually defend this measure in the Supreme Court.

This is probably the only thing Trump announced Friday in the White House gardens and to which virtually all have subscribed.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has announced its intention to sue less than an hour after the White House published the text of Trump's statement, saying that "the current situation on the southern border represents a a security and humanitarian crisis that endangers the interests of national security and constitutes a national emergency. "

The legal struggle that is getting ready probably revolves around two main questions: can the president declare a national emergency to build a border wall before Congress refuses to give him all the money he wanted? And, according to the federal law cited by Trump in the statement, can the Ministry of Defense seize some of the Congressionally approved military projects to finance the construction of the wall?

Until now, the Pentagon has not specified which projects could be affected.

However, after weeks of reflection, Trump 's emergency declaration set in motion the process that will bring him to court.

Trump used the 1976 National Emergency Law, pbaded by Congress to limit the presidential use of national emergencies. The law requires the president to publicly inform Congress of National Emergency and report every six months. The law also stipulates that the president must renew the emergency every year with a simple notification to the Congress. The House of Representatives and the Senate may also revoke the declaration by a majority of votes, although they need two-thirds of the votes of both chambers to cancel a presidential veto.

But beyond all this, the law does not specify what constitutes a national emergency or imposes other limits on the president.

The broad discretion given to the President would make it difficult to persuade the courts that Trump exceeded his authority by declaring a border emergency. "He's the only one to have the right to decide, we can not challenge him," said John Eastman, a professor of constitutional law at Chapman University's Faculty of Law.

Courts often hesitate to go beyond the justifications cited by the president in his statement, said Peter Shane, a law professor at Ohio State University.

However, other legal experts say the facts are powerfully accommodated against the president. Among these are official statistics showing decades of decreasing numbers of illegal border crossings, as well as Trump's refusal to approve an agreement last year giving him more than $ 1.4 billion that he received for the security of the border, in the agreement that was approved Thursday in Congress. Opponents of the statement will likely use Trump 's own words during his press conference at the White House to argue that there is no urgency at the border.

"I could build the wall in a much longer period," said Trump. "I did not need to do that, but I prefer to do it much faster," admitted the Republican president.

The ACLU Executive Director, Anthony Romero, said that Trump's comments are a recognition that there is no national emergency situation. "I was just impatient and frustrated by Congress," Romero said in a statement saying the group would take legal action next week.

Trump said he expects to lose in first and second instance courts, which he says has been unfair to him, especially if the lawsuits are filed in California. "Let's hope we have an opportunity and win in the Supreme Court," he said.