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President Trump has declared a national emergency to free up funds for his border wall between the United States and Mexico. But declaring a national emergency is not new. In fact, the use of emergency powers is older than the country itself.
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WASHINGTON – Thirty minutes later, President Donald Trump had acknowledged that he had decided to declare a national emergency to help with the construction of his border-wall. He may have given ammunition to his opponents.

Trump, who has long described the situation on the southwestern border as a "crisis" and an "invasion," seemed to suggest that his administration had all the time needed to build the hundreds of kilometers of border fence that it had been asking for months.

"I could do the wall longer, I do not need to do that," Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday night, shortly before signing a proclamation declaring the state of 39; emergency. "But I would rather do it much faster."

Opponents of Trump, including a number of groups and officials who have sued the administration for national emergency, complied with the candid words of the president and claimed that they seemed to undermine his claims over an urgent problem. on the southern border.

More: Follow the money: how Trump 's national emergency will fund the construction of a border wall

More: Here's how Democrats will try to stop Trump's national emergency order

George Conway, a lawyer and frequent critic of Trump, married to Trump's former assistant, Kellyanne Conway, summed up the reaction in a message posted on Twitter: "This quote should be the first sentence of the first paragraph of each [lawsuit] class. "

A host of groups queuing to challenge Trump 's national emergency will likely rely on the quote to suggest that "urgency" is a fiction. Federal courts have closely studied Trump's words and tweets to clear the administration's argument that the travel ban signed by the president early in 2017 was not intended in majority to Muslim countries.But in a ruling upholding the ban, the Supreme Court said that it should take into account not only Trump's statements, but also "the authority of the presidency itself" when Review of his actions.

But experts said the president 's remarks, which were posted on cable TV stations almost all on Friday, should not bring down Trump' s emergency statement. The National Emergencies Act gives the President the power to define what is an emergency – without setting strict rules on the urgency of a problem or the severity of its harm.

Congress has written the law, intentionally, to give presidents flexibility. The most difficult legal issue for the White House is what Trump powers intends to invoke once declared national emergency.

"Because the president's words are so much at odds with the ordinary meaning of the word" urgent ", any brief that challenges the urgency would be remiss not to mention it," said Peter M. Shane, professor of constitutional law. and administrative at Ohio State University. "If a court would use these words to cancel the statement is another matter."

On February 15, 2019, President Donald Trump declared the state of national emergency at the White House in an attempt to fund and build his long-promised wall along the US-Mexico border . (Photo11: ERIK S. LESSER, EPA-EFE)

Trump signed the proclamation Friday after the Congress sent him a law that financed the government until the end of September, preventing a new closure, and providing $ 1.375 billion for the wall, much less than the 5 , $ 7 billion he had originally requested. The White House said Trump will try to access another $ 6.6 billion through the national emergency and the transfer of funds from other programs.

Public Citizen, a Washington-based watchdog group, was among the first to announce their intention to sue Trump for emergency. Allison M. Zieve, director of the litigation group of the watchdog group, said the organization "will definitely recite its statement in our newspapers, and I hope all the complaints will be".

California Attorney General Xavier Becerra, a Democrat, also referred to Trump's remarks at his own press conference on Friday in which he said he was coordinating with other attorneys general to prepare a trial.

"President Trump understood his statement this morning when he said:" I did not have to do that. "He's right, he does not have to do that," said Becerra. "In fact, he can not do that because the US Constitution gives Congress, not the President, the power to run dollars."

US government data from the southern border indicates that the vast majority of narcotics captured at the border transit through points of entry, not the broad border bands between the two, where additional barriers may be encountered. to be erected. And the number of migrants apprehended for attempting to illegally enter the United States is significantly lower than it was ten years ago.

Apprehensions along the southern border are in fact at historically low levels. Border patrols have regularly arrested more than one million people each year, with a peak of 1.6 million in 2000, throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. he apprehended a little more than 300 000. In 2018, she apprehended a little less than 400 000 people.

But experts have predicted that few of these points matter legally.

More: Trump's emergency declaration would trigger a long legal battle

"The litigation will not find out if an emergency was" necessary, "said Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin, who teaches national security law.

"It will certainly be invoked by the challengers," he said, "but it is not an end-of-game mistake."

More: Follow the money: how the national emergency of President Trump will finance the construction of a border wall

More: "All available remedies": here is what the Democrats have promised to do to contradict Trump 's national emergency order on the wall of the border

More: National emergencies are common. declare one for a boundary wall is not

More: "Dangerous precedent": US chamber joins conservative critics of Trump's emergency declaration

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Contributors: Richard Wolf, Alan Gomez

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