Yesterday, US News and World Report published my article, “Trump Claims Dictatorial Powers on Immigration,” coauthored with David Bier. Here is an excerpt:
During his campaign for president, Donald Trump said he’d only be a dictator on “Day One,” when he would “close the border” to nearly all immigrants. True to his word, when Trump entered office, he signed executive orders that sought to rewrite the Constitution and explicitly override the law to restrict immigration.
But those executive orders didn’t expire on Day Two. The president is still exercising dictatorial powers on immigration, and it isn’t yet clear that anyone will stop him. Several court decisions have sought to rein him in, and the Supreme Court should also intervene, if necessary. Whatever one thinks of immigration, any limits must be imposed lawfully.
Trump’s theory of presidential control over immigration goes well beyond his predecessors’. In an executive proclamation issued within hours of being inaugurated, Trump asserted that he has total power to shut down virtually all legal immigration and ignore laws that protect immigrants from wrongful detention and deportation.
The president indicated that he can unilaterally suspend Congress’ immigration laws because they are “ineffective,” even though the Constitution gives Congress – not the president – the authority to make laws.
To justify ignoring laws such as the Refugee Act of 1980, which allows those who claim they are escaping persecution to enter the U.S. to apply for asylum, Trump relied on the idea that the president is constitutionally authorized to stop “invasions.” But illegal migration is not an invasion. Under the Constitution, as Founding Father James Madison put it, “Invasion is an operation of war,” not a civilian violating a bureaucratic regulation on where to cross a border….
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