It was one of his most resounding campaign promises: Donald Trump promised several times that he would declare, upon his inauguration, a state of emergency in the United States to carry out his expulsion plan. massive numbers of undocumented migrants. His response to the post from the leader of the conservative group Judicial WatchTom Son, on the network Truth Social Monday November 18, confirms its ambition. The president-elect “will declare a national emergency and use military means to fight illegal immigration” through a mass expulsion program,” the latter’s post read. “TRUE!!! “, replied the 47th elected president of the United States around four in the morning.
Not yet invested, the billionaire has already made this plan palpable by appointing Thomas Homan, his “Border Tsar”, last week as head of border control. During his first mandate, the latter was a fervent defender of the policy of family separation to dissuade migrants from remaining in the territory. In addition to launching what he calls “the largest deportation operation” in the country’s history, the next president of the United States has pledged to reinstate and expand his controversial ban on people from certain countries majority Muslim as part of its immigration policy.
Build “transit centers”
What exactly do we know about Donald Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants? In an interview given to New York Times During the Republican primary in November 2023, the billionaire’s former senior immigration policy adviser and now deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller promised that military funds could be used to build “vast detention facilities that would serve as transit centers” managed by the Department of Homeland Security, to detain migrants while awaiting their departure by plane to other countries. According to the president-elect’s team, these infrastructures could make it possible to accelerate the expulsions of undocumented immigrants, not giving them time to settle down and then oppose their “deportation”.
Mobilize the army within the framework of the state of emergency
In the United States, the president has the power to trigger a state of emergency at his discretion, which makes it possible to unlock reserve powers such as the redirection of funds that deputies and senators had allocated for other purposes. During his first term, Donald Trump used it to spend more on the famous “wall” on the Mexican border than Congress had authorized. This power was also used to mobilize the federal army to manage the emergency in question. Questioned by the New York TimesHowever, Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh did not confirm the feasibility of such a measure, calling it “hypothetical”, and adding that such a measure would generally be subject to “a rigorous process” before be implemented.
According to the American daily, Donald Trump’s team “also plans to extend a form of expulsion without due process known as expedited expulsion, which is currently used near the border for new arrivals, to people living inside the country who cannot prove that they have been in the United States for more than two years. The future Trump administration also plans, according to the newspaper, to end the right to citizenship by birth on the territory, for children born to illegal immigrant parents.
Is it possible to stop this plan?
Several elected Democrats assure that such measures would violate federal laws which govern in particular the use of the army on American soil. “We are doing everything in our power to make it clear that the law on insurrection should not allow this use of the army,” declared to the New York Times Senator Richard Blumenthal, elected Democrat from Connecticut. He’s referring to the 1807 law that grants presidents emergency authority to use troops domestically to restore order when they decide a situation warrants it. Under this law, “if there is no threat to public order of a fundamental and profound nature, it would be illegal,” according to the senator.
“In California, we have been thinking about these possibilities for months, if not years, and we are preparing by examining all the actions that Donald Trump has said he wants to take,” Rob Bonta, Attorney General of California, recently added to the American channel ABC News. Not everything is preventable, but to reach our immigrant communities through means that are in violation of the law, they will have to go through me, and we will stop them in court using the legal tools given to us.” added the prosecutor.