Since returning to the presidency in January, Donald Trump’s administration has greatly restricted illegal access to our country’s southern border. He often claimed – of course, wrong – that made some sort of record there.
Now, we find that Trump will invoke the 1807 Uprising Act on April 20 to deal with what he asked for in his first day in the office, “a national emergency on the southern border.” Trump has invoked ancient federal laws to curb immigration while also allowing the military to take over the land on the border.
Calling for Trump to play triple matches – He declared an emergency, then claimed that the emergency had been corrected, and then demanded huge powers to deal with the emergency he claimed had been resolved.
Trump doesn’t care about logical disconnection. His only focus is to expand the power of the presidency. He will never let the facts or his own declarations stop the road.
Trump desperately wants to be on the border emergency
President Donald Trump was in the Oval Office of the White House on April 18, 2025.
Trump, in an executive order on January 20, declared an emergency at the southern border, setting a 90-day deadline for Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a joint report on border conditions, including “whether to invoke the 1807 Uprising Act.”
CNN quoted government sources on April 18 as saying that Noem and Hegseth do not expect to recommend temporary invocation of the Uprising Act at present because border crossings are decreasing.
We will see it. As we wait, it’s worth considering that in any case, Norm and Heggs won’t tell Trump what he doesn’t want to hear. They have never shown us the power of this character. Don’t expect now.
Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of freedom and national security at the Brennan Justice Center, told me that Trump has wanted to invoke the Uprising Act since the protests in 2020 after the Minneapolis police murdered George Floyd.
Then Defense Secretary Mark Esper dared to tell Trump that at that time. If they have the ability to learn the lessons of integrity, he can teach Hegs and Norm. Spoiler Alert: They don’t.
Invoking the Uprising Act will enable Trump to deploy active-duty military personnel in the country for law enforcement, while also joining National Guard forces from various states in the effort.
This could mean soldiers drove into the city in armored vehicles, blocking people from being in the street while asking for identification before searching for houses.
“We didn’t know until we saw it, but theoretically it was allowed under the Uprising Act,” Goitein said.
Trump’s “legal incoherence” immigration method
Trump invoked the Alien Enemy Act in March to assist in mass exclusion efforts. But on April 19, the U.S. Supreme Court told him that lawyers successfully argued that the process required judicial review and temporarily stopped deporting Venezuelan immigrants.
Trump issued another executive order on April 11, authorizing U.S. military to control federal land along the border. His attempts to use military personnel along the border could also raise legal challenges.
Goitein called Trump’s approach “legal and incoherent” because the Uprising Act regards illegal immigration as a matter of law enforcement, while the Alien Enemy Act regards it as an “act of war” and Trump’s new militarization of the border as “acts of invasion at military bases.”
Viewpoint: Trump mistakenly deports a Maryland man to El Salvador with your taxes
And, likewise, all of this happens when Trump boasts about effectively, effectively closing the borders. Here is what he told the National Republican Congress Committee in his April 8 speech: “In a few weeks, we have reached the lowest illegal transit level in U.S. history.”
Of course not true. Worries about immigrants entering the country illegally are the lowest in decades, but not in U.S. history.
This is the truth about what Trump wants to do with deportation
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth met with military personnel when he visited the border area of Senlan Park, New Mexico on February 3, 2025.
The truth is easy to see, and it’s easy to predict, like I did in a column three weeks after Trump won reelection. He wanted to relax the military in the United States to pursue those he believed to be the enemy. If you think this stops undocumented immigration, then you are not paying attention.
Don’t believe me. Read what federal judge J. Harvie Wilkinson wrote in April 17’s view of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals after White House officials continued to try to get rid of their responsibility for illegally expelling a Marylander from El Salvador, Maryland.
“If executives today claim no due process and ignore the right to court orders, there will be no guarantee tomorrow that it will not expel U.S. citizens and then not take responsibility for taking them home?” Wilkinson, a well-known conservative, wrote to Trump and his administration in justice.
Comments: In the Trump era of columnist Chris Brennan, see our newsletter on people, power, and policy. Deliver it to your inbox.
Gortin of the Brennan Justice Center told me that Trump had been sending mixed signals when he returned to the White House.
“Trump himself posted on social media that the invasion has ended and in the past few months, few have come to try to cross the border,” Goitein said. “They have come up with a very powerful case where the president must terminate his emergency statement on January 20.”
Vanessa Cárdenas, executive director of the U.S. Voice, an immigration rights group, told me she saw two motives for Trump invoking the Uprising Act. One: He likes “scapegoat” immigration. Two: Given all his government issues, he can really be distracted in the news now.
Trump’s mission is to make Americans afraid of distraction
The first motivation she calls “hate narratives” is “to convince the American public that we have some fear.”
“He is invoking all these really old laws to justify his argument for promoting this idea of invasion,” Caldens said. “It is part of a political strategy to incite his base and continue to develop hatred and anger towards immigrants.”
On March 24, 2025, a U.S. Army soldier armored vehicle in Fort Bliss, Texas was part of the deployed military force to assist the Mexican border along the Great Bend of El Paso and Texas as part of the Southern Joint Task Force.
When he pressed the Immigration Crusade, Trump also hit the stock market with illogical trade tariffs, his trade tax rate of about and then doubled. And, after pledging to win reelection with a promise to make things more affordable, Trump showed zero effort to actually improve the economy.
“He’s going to be distracted now, and I think that’s probably that,” Caldens said of the Uprising Act.
Viewpoint: The midterm elections are not as far away as you think. The battle has begun.
Goitein told me that the court has long been reluctant to question the president’s declaration of an emergency. But, she said the U.S. Supreme Court had suggested some exemption for this – the president acted “malice.”
If there has been a tailor-made legal precedent for Trump, that’s it. Maliciousness is his main operating system.
“There are exceptions when the president goes beyond a series of honest judgments, the president makes an obvious mistake, or the president acts in a way that is obviously unauthorized by the law,” she said.
So, like almost everything we saw in Trump’s first three months of office, the court is an equivalent branch of our administration and may also be asked to control his another abuse of power. The question is still not answered – will Trump comply with the law if the judge told him to stop?
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This article originally appeared in “US Today: Trump”, hoping to induce justice. Oops So he’s lying | Views
