President Donald Trump declared national emergency, a move that would unlock billions of dollars of federal money to construct a wall along the US-Mexico border, saying it was essential to prevent the country from “invasion” of illegal immigrants. Democrats vowed to challenge the action as a violation of the US Constitution. 

Trump’s move followed a rare show of bipartisanship on February 14 when legislators voted to fund large swaths of the government and avoid a repeat of the recent five-week government shutdown. The money in the bill for border barriers, about $1.4 billion, is far below the $5.7 billion Trump insisted he needed to build the physical barrier. It would finance just a quarter of the more than 322 kilometres he wanted this year. 

Trump told reporters that his predecessors have used this provisions of presidential powers multiple times in the past, even for issues that are less important than for what he has signed on February 15. Within hours, the action was challenged in a lawsuit filed on behalf of three Texas landowners, saying that Trump’s declaration violates the US Constitution and that the planned wall would infringe on their property rights. Both California and New York said that they, too, planned to file lawsuits.

The Democratic-controlled House of Representatives’ Judiciary Committee said it had launched an investigation into the emergency declaration. In a letter to Trump, committee Democrats asked him to make available for a hearing White House and Justice Department officials involved in the action. They also requested legal documents on the decision that led to the declaration, setting a deadline of February 22. 

In a joint statement, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer declared Trump’s declaration of emergency as unlawful, which they said is over a crisis that does not exist and it does great violence to the Constitution. “This is plainly a power grab by a disappointed president, who has gone outside the bounds of the law to try to get what he failed to achieve in the constitutional legislative process,” they said.

The funding Bill represented a legislative defeat for him since it contains no money for his proposed wall — the focus of weeks of conflict between Trump and Democrats in Congress. Trump made no mention of the Bill in rambling comments to reporters in the White House’s Rose Garden. He had demanded that Congress provide him with $5.7 billion in wall funding as part of legislation to fund the agencies. That triggered a historic, 35-day government shutdown in December and January that hurt the US economy and his opinion poll numbers. 

By reorienting his quest for wall funding toward a legally uncertain strategy based on declaring a national emergency, Trump risks plunging into a lengthy legislative and legal battle with Democrats and dividing his fellow Republicans — many of  whom expressed grave reservations about the president’s action. 

Under the National Emergencies Act, since 1976, US presidents have declared nearly 60 national emergencies, according to a White House fact sheet. As many as 31 of them are still in effect, a senior administration official said. For instance, former Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, who became former president Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary, declared a state of emergency along the border in 2005. Former New Mexico governor Bill Richardson also declared a state of emergency at the border in 2005. Former presidents George W. Bush and Obama directed the use of the military to assist Homeland Security in securing and managing the Southern Border. Bush declared a national emergency in 2001, which invoked reprogramming authority granted by Title 10 United States Code, section 2808, and both he and Obama used that authority a total of 18 times to fund projects between 2001 and 2014, the White House said.