Trump’s Plans to Enforce the Law Against Illegals The battle ahead. Joseph Klein
https://www.frontpagemag.com/trumps-plans-to-enforce-the-law-against-illegals/
President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory over the Democrats’ hapless nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has given him a clear mandate to vigorously pursue his policy priorities. These include strong immigration law enforcement, lowering prices and reinvigorating domestic manufacturing to create more good paying jobs, U.S. energy dominance, strengthening national security, conducting foreign policy that puts America first, and protecting free speech.
Mr. Trump emphasized these policy goals repeatedly during his campaign. He left no doubt with the American people what he would do if elected. The American people responded with overwhelming approval in a fair, transparent election – across demographics, classes, ages, and geographical regions.
But the hypocritical left-wing progressives, who have continually smeared Mr. Trump as an existential threat to democracy, are proving that they are the real threats to democracy. They refuse to accept the majority of voters’ verdict on the direction they want the country to follow.
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) is plotting with his Democrat colleagues to block President-elect Trump’s achievement of his policy agenda priorities, or at least to slow them down as much as possible. Members of the Progressive, Black, Hispanic, Asian Pacific American and Equality caucuses are the most vocal advocates in Congress of this obstructionist strategy. Governors in Democrat-run states such as California Governor Gavin Newsom, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, and Illinois Governor JB Pritzker are planning to fight Mr. Trump every step of the way. This includes shielding illegal immigrants who reside within their sanctuary jurisdictions from federal law enforcement officers.
President-elect Trump has said that the illegal immigration crisis, which the Biden-Harris open border and catch-and-release policies precipitated, is his top priority to solve when he becomes the 47th president on January 20, 2025. Because of these outrageous policies, more than ten million illegal immigrants have poured into the U.S., many of whom are residing in communities across America including record numbers of suspected terrorists and criminal gang members. About eight million of these illegal immigrants crossed into the United States from Mexico – more than three times the number during the Trump administration. This is unsustainable.
On the day Mr. Trump takes office, he is expected to sign a series of executive orders to crack down on illegal immigration. These will include one or more executive orders ending the Biden-Harris administration’s catch-and-release policy, imposing more stringent restrictions on eligibility for asylum, and reinstating the successful border security policies of Mr. Trump’s first administration that the Biden-Harris administration reversed. Restoring the Remain-in-Mexico program and building the wall come to mind. Mr. Trump is also likely to sign an executive order that would cancel the Biden-Harris administration’s mass humanitarian parole programs that has allowed migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who received such parole to stay in the United States indefinitely. And on Day One of his administration, we can expect Mr. Trump to kick off his mass deportation program through an executive order and to reallocate sufficient funds to expand capacity for detaining illegal immigrants pending their expedited removal hearings.
Border agents will be directed to stop performing the Biden-Harris administration’s wasteful task of processing papers to permit immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally to remain in the country. Instead, the border agents will be assigned full time to barring illegal immigrants from entering the United States and turning back illegal immigrants managing to set foot on U.S. soil who have not been thoroughly vetted.
Adversaries such as China and Venezuela do not share accurate background information regarding their citizens with the United States, or in many cases do not share any information at all. Therefore, absent clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable for border agents to presume that illegal immigrants from these adversarial countries are trying to enter the United States under false pretenses. And absent clear and convincing evidence to the contrary, it is reasonable for border agents to presume that they would pose a security threat to the American people if they were permitted to remain in this country.
Mr. Trump has said that he intends to invoke the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 in support of his mass deportation program. The Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which is still in effect, authorizes the president to apprehend, restrain, and remove male noncitizens who are fourteen years or older if, among other things, the U.S. faces an “invasion or predatory incursion” by a hostile country or foreign government. The statute can be reasonably interpreted to apply to male teen and adult illegal immigrants from Venezuela and China, for example.
The Venezuelan government is reported to have released violent criminals from its jails, allowing them to head to the United States to cross the U.S. southern border, which constitutes an “invasion or predatory incursion” by a hostile country. Invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 will allow the Trump administration to round up, detain, and deport male Venezuelan teen and adult gang members without any lengthy hearing or judicial review.
Moreover, a spike in encounters of Chinese nationals at the southern border with Mexico became noticeable starting in 2023 compared to the prior years. Many of these Chinese nationals are military-age men.
“We know that China is using everything that they have, every bit of espionage, to spy on our military and our high technology,” said Rebecca Grant, Ph.D., a national security analyst at IRIS Independent Research. “And we know China’s government is not our friend, so this dramatic upswing, I think it could definitely present a potential national security risk.”
The Alien Enemies Act is a tool that Mr. Trump should be able to use to detain and expel male, military-age Chinese nationals who entered the U.S. illegally.
In addition, Mr. Trump will have the legislative authority to suspend the entry of some or all immigrants if he proclaims an emergency. Pursuant to 8 U.S.C. § 1182(f), the president has the authority “to suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens” whenever the president “finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.” In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court majority concluded that §1182(f) is a “comprehensive delegation” that gives the president broad discretion to determine “when to suspend entry,” “whose entry to suspend,” “for how long,” and “on what conditions.”
In short, President-elect Trump, once he is inaugurated, will have sufficient legislative authority to effectively close the border to the entry of new migrants from counties that are adversarial or are safe havens for terrorists.
To show that he means business, President-elect Trump has appointed his own border czar, Tom Homan, who will hit the ground running to carry out Mr. Trump’s ambitious anti-illegal immigration agenda. Mr. Homan knows how to strictly enforce the U.S. immigration laws, based on his decades of practical experience in this area. He was the former head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in both the Obama and Trump administrations.
Tom Homan has a take-no-prisoners approach to capturing, detaining, and deporting illegal migrants. This will start with those who pose a threat to national security, are violent criminals such as Venezuelan gang members, or have already been ordered to be removed from the country but have remained anyway.
The new border czar’s message to New York City and other sanctuary jurisdictions is that “we’re going to do the job with you or without you.”
Expect raids of workplaces suspected of hiring illegal immigrants and of shelters and hotels known to be locations where illegal immigrants are residing, authorized by warrants when and where necessary. And expect a massive expansion of detention facilities.
The Left’s obstructionists are warning that they will fight against the second Trump administration tooth and nail. Anthony D. Romero, the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, for example, declared that “the ACLU has a concrete plan to fight back. When President-elect Trump comes for our communities, he’s gotta get through all of us.”
ACLU’s weapon of choice is litigation. Its memo entitled “Trump on Immigration” stated that “just as it was from 2017 to 2021, litigation will be a critical component of the response.” Regarding Mr. Trump’s plans for mass deportation of illegal immigrants, the ACLU memo asserts that “Trump’s plan would require his administration to trample on numerous fundamental protections set out in the Constitution and laws passed by Congress. It would therefore be vulnerable to legal challenge from multiple angles.”
The incoming Trump administration should not sit back and play defense against challenges to Mr. Trump’s executive orders that the obstructionists are gearing up to bring in a venue friendly to progressives such as the 9th Circuit. That is unfortunately what happened during the first Trump administration. Instead, the new Trump administration should go on offense. Simultaneously with the signing of the executive orders, the administration should consider filing a motion for declaratory judgment seeking affirmation of the executive orders’ legality. The motion could be brought before a federal district court judge who is likely to be receptive to the administration’s position, such as U.S. District Court Judge J. Campbell Barker of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. The motion would ask the court to affirm that Mr. Trump’s executive orders, and their implementation as directed in the executive orders, are both constitutional and lawful under all relevant statutes.
Democrat governors and mayors in blue states are vowing to block the incoming Trump administration from moving forward with its mass deportation program in their sanctuary jurisdictions. In addition to filing their own lawsuits challenging the legality of the program, they intend to continue prohibiting cooperation between local law enforcement officers and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Under current law, local law enforcement officers cannot be forced to detain and hand over illegal immigrant prisoners to ICE agents absent a warrant, or to otherwise assist ICE agents in apprehending illegal immigrants. However, the incoming Trump administration can place National Guard forces from red states under federal control and dispatch them to the sanctuary jurisdictions to assist the ICE agents. They can be used to quell any riots, remove and arrest anyone who unlawfully obstructs ICE’s law enforcement activities, and arrest anyone on insurrection charges who vandalizes, breaks into, or burns federal facilities, or attacks ICE personnel.
The incoming Trump administration should also consider punishing the sanctuary jurisdictions that shield illegal immigrants by, for example, denying them any further federal public safety grants. Mr. Trump could issue an executive order to that effect and then seek to codify conditions for being entitled to such federal grants in budget reconciliation legislation.
Finally, the incoming Trump administration should consider going after the sanctuary jurisdictions directly by filing a lawsuit to have sanctuary jurisdictions’ shielding of illegal immigrants declared unconstitutional. The grounds would be that shielding illegal immigrants from federal law enforcement violates the U.S. Constitution’s Supremacy Clause by working at cross purposes with the federal government’s exclusive power to make and enforce the nation’s immigration laws.
The Left will pull out all the stops to sabotage the incoming Trump administration’s programs to push back aggressively against the specter of illegal immigration. The answer to the obstructionists, to quote Mr. Trump, is to “Fight, Fight, Fight!”
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