How Trump calling immigration an ‘invasion’ could help him stretch the law

No longer just campaign trail rhetoric, President Donald Trump’s insistence that immigration to the United States amounts to an “invasion” may be critical to unlocking extraordinary powers as the administration carries out his deportation agenda.

No longer just campaign trail rhetoric, President Donald Trump’s insistence that immigration to the United States amounts to an “invasion” may be critical to unlocking extraordinary powers as the administration carries out his deportation agenda. Multiple executive orders and agency memos use the word “invasion” to describe why Trump is taking actions that tighten the US border, empower state and local officials to carry out immigration enforcement, and take a more aggressive approach to detaining and deporting migrants. Some orders signed by Trump last week use “Invasion” in their titles, and one proclamation is built specifically around a constitutional provision that says the federal government is obligated to protect the states “against invasion.” In another early action, Trump issued a national emergency declaration the described an “invasion” at the border that “has caused widespread chaos and suffering in our country over the last 4 years.” The word choice is intentional. Legal experts believe the administration could try to rely on the invasion rationale to justify possible future actions that would go beyond the limits of immigration law and that would ignore the procedures in place for border-crossers. “The invasion point comes in here, because the most basic and longstanding purpose to having a military is to stop people from invading your country. And that’s what’s happening at the southern border,” said Ken Cuccinelli, who served as the acting deputy secretary of Homeland Security in the first Trump administration. “The president doesn’t need anything beyond his commander in chief authority to block people from crossing the border illegally.”