Trump Desperately Eyes Insurrection Act, Spreads Falsehoods to Justify Move

Since he became president again in January, Donald Trump has bragged every month that his government has made it much harder for people to come into the country illegally at the southern border. He always lies when he says that he set some kind of record there.

On his first day in office, Trump called the situation at the southern border “a national emergency.” On April 20, we will find out if he will use the Insurrection Act of 1807 to settle it. Trump has already used old federal rules to stop people from coming to the US and has also had the military take over land along the border.

You could call that the Trump triple play: he declares an emergency, then says he has fixed it, and then asks for broad powers to deal with the emergency he says he has already fixed.

Trump doesn’t care about things that don’t make sense. His only goal is to give his leadership more power. He would never let facts or his own claims get in the way of that.

Trump really wants there to be an emergency at the border.

In his executive order on January 20, Trump declared an emergency at the southern border. He also gave Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth 90 days to look into the situation at the border and decide “whether to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807.”

According to official sources quoted by CNN on April 18, Noem and Hegseth are not likely to suggest using the Insurrection Act at this time because fewer people are crossing the border.

We’ll check that out. We should think about the fact that Noem and Hegseth would never, ever tell Trump something he doesn’t want to hear while we wait. They’ve never shown us that much character. Don’t count on it right now.

I talked to Elizabeth Goitein, who is the senior director for liberty and national security at the Brennan Centre for Justice. She told me that Trump has wanted to use the Insurrection Act since the 2020 protests in his first term, after a Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd.

Mark Esper, who was Defence Secretary at the time, was brave enough to tell Trump no. He had a lot to teach Hegseth and Noem about being honest, if they were willing to learn. They don’t, as you already know.

Trump could use the Insurrection Act to send active-duty military members to help with law enforcement in the United States. He could also bring in National Guard troops from other states to help.

Of course, this could mean that soldiers drive armoured trucks into cities, stop people on the street and ask for ID, and search homes door to door.

“We don’t know until we see it,” said Goitein, “but that is the kind of thing that, in theory, could be permitted under the Insurrection Act.”

Trump’s approach to immigration is “legally incoherent.”

In March, Trump used the Alien Enemies Act to help with a large-scale deportation attempt. But on April 19, the U.S. Supreme Court told him to stop deporting Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. for now because lawyers had presented a strong case for court review.

On April 11, Trump signed another order that gave the troops permission to take over federal lands along the border. It’s also possible that he will be sued for trying to use military troops along the border.

The Insurrection Act sees illegal immigration “as a law enforcement matter,” the Alien Enemies Act sees it “as an act of war,” and Trump’s new decision to make the border more military sees it “as an act of trespass on a military base.” This is why Goitein says Trump’s approach is “legally incoherent.”

All of this is happening at the same time that Trump is bragging about how well and quickly the border is closed. In a speech on April 8, he told the National Republican Congressional Committee the following: “Less people crossing the border illegally than ever before in the history of the United States in just a few weeks.”

Of course that’s not true. The number of people caught crossing into the U.S. illegally is the lowest it has been in decades, but never before in U.S. history.

Here is what Trump really wants to do about deportations:

It is easy to see the truth here, and it has also been easy to guess. For example, I said this in a piece on November 24, three weeks after Trump won re-election. He wants to let the military hunt down people he thinks are his enemies in the United States. You haven’t been paying attention if you think that stops with illegal aliens.

Do not believe what I say. On April 17, federal judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote a ruling for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. This was after White House officials kept trying to avoid taking responsibility for sending a man from Maryland to El Salvador without giving him any due process.

“If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” Wilkinson, a well-known conservative, wrote, “The courts have slapped down Trump and his administration.”

Goitein from the Brennan Centre for Justice told me that Trump has been sending mixed messages since he got back to the White House.

“Trump himself posted on social media that the invasion is over, that very few people came in the last couple of months to try to get over the border,” said Goitein. “They have made an incredibly strong case that the president must terminate the emergency declaration that he issued on January 20.”

Vanessa Cárdenas, executive head of the immigration rights group America’s Voice, told me that she thinks Trump is using the Insurrection Act for two reasons. One: He loves to blame foreigners for problems. Another thing is that he could use a break from all the bad news about his government right now.

Trump wants to distract people from the real problems by making them afraid.

She calls the first reason a “hateful narrative” that is “meant to make the American public think that we have something to fear.”

“He is invoking all of these really archaic laws to justify this idea that he is promoting this idea of invasion,” he said. “It’s part of a political strategy to agitate his base and continue creating hate and anger towards immigrants.”

While Trump is on a mission against immigration, he is also crashing the stock market with trade tariffs that don’t make sense, which he then changes his mind about and then goes back on. And even though he promised to make things cheaper when he ran for office again, Trump has done nothing to actually make the business better.

Cárdenas said of the Insurrection Act, “He would love a distraction right now, and I think this could be it.”

Goitein told me that the courts have not been willing to question a president’s statement of an emergency for a long time. She said that the U.S. Supreme Court has said there is an exception for that: a president who acts in “bad faith.”

This case sounds like it was made just for Trump from a law point of view. His main operating system is bad trust.

“There are exceptions when the president has exceeded a permitted range of honest judgement, where the president has made an obvious mistake, or where the president is acting in a way that’s manifestly unauthorised by law,” she said. Courts are “triggered in the situation where the president is simultaneously bragging about the lack of an emergency at the southern border and trying to invoke emergency powers.”

There has been a lot of abuse of power by Trump in his first three months in office. The courts, which are an equal part of our government, will likely have to stop him from abusing their power again. Will Trump follow the law if judges tell him to stop? That is still an open question.

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