The National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States (Proclamation 9844) was declared on February 15, 2019, by United States president Donald Trump during his first administration. Citing the National Emergencies Act, it ordered the diversion of billions of dollars of funds that had been appropriated to the U.S. Department of Defense for military construction. Trump declared the emergency after he signed, but derided, a bipartisan funding bill (passed by the House and the Senate a day before) containing border security funding without funding for the Mexico–United States border wall.
Trump had previously threatened to declare a national emergency if Congress did not pass his entire desired program for a wall on the United States–Mexican border by February 15, 2019. Under Proclamation 9844, the Trump administration intended to redirect $8 billion in previously agreed expenditure and to use the money to build the wall instead. Under Trump's plan, $3.6 billion assigned to military construction, $2.5 billion meant for the Department of Defense's drug interdiction activities, and $600 million from the Treasury's forfeiture fund would be diverted for wall construction. Trump's declaration was unprecedented in that none of the 58 previous emergency declarations made by U.S. presidents involved circumventing Congress to spend money it had expressly refused to authorize or allocate.
Trump's declaration of a national emergency was condemned by Democrats as unconstitutional; U.S. speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the declaration an affront to the rule of law that was "a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall."Dartunorro Clark, 'Dangerous.' 'Abuse.' 'Lawless': Bipartisan attack on Trump national emergency declaration , NBC News (February 14, 2019). Some Republicans also criticized Trump's declaration, fearing that circumventing Congress would set a dangerous precedent for the future. Congress passed a joint resolution to terminate the national emergency, but it was vetoed by Trump; this was his first veto.
Trump's declaration of a national emergency was immediately challenged in federal court, with California and sixteen other states suing the federal government on separation of powers grounds.Rebecca Davis O'Brien & Sadie Gurman, States File Suit Against Trump Administration Over Wall Emergency , Wall Street Journal (February 18, 2019).
The Sierra Club and ACLU brought a similar suit.Bobby Allyn, Federal Judge Rules Against Border Wall Construction With Military Funds , NPR (June 28, 2019). In 2019, a U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction, and later a permanent injunction, in the Sierra Club suit, blocking Trump from diverting military funds for construction of a border wall.Kartikay Mehrotra, Trump's Plan to Start Building Wall Monday Crumbles in Court , Bloomberg (June 29, 2019). In July 2019, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4, one-paragraph ruling, overturned the lower court's ruling in Trump v. Sierra Club that blocked the use of funds to construct the border wall pending further legal proceedings; the Supreme Court majority found that the Sierra Club likely lacked legal standing.
In October 2019, in a separate case, a U.S. district court in Texas found that the El Paso County, Texas and the Border Network for Human Rights had legal standing to challenge Trump's attempt to divert $3.6 billion in military construction for wall construction along the Mexico border, and in December 2019, the court issued a permanent injunction blocking the attempted diversion of funds.Priscilla Alvarez & Caroline Kelly, Federal judge blocks use of billions of dollars in Pentagon funds to build border wall , CNN (December 10, 2019). The injunction was overturned in January 2020.
In a proclamation made on February 13, 2020, Trump extended Proclamation 9844 for an additional year; he repeated the one-year extension on January 15, 2021, just days before leaving office.Sandra Sanchez, Biden rescinds Trump’s emergency declaration on border security, halts border wall construction , Border Report (January 20, 2021). However, Trump's successor, President Joe Biden, in one of his first official acts as president on January 20, 2021, terminated Trump's emergency declaration and paused work on the wall. On February 11, 2021, Biden wrote in a letter to Congress that the original declaration of national emergency had been "unwarranted" and that no more government funds would be used to build the wall, although he still used the remaining budget in 2023.
On January 20, 2025, the national emergency was reinstated by an executive order, by Donald Trump during his second administration.
Background Trump campaign and presidency
The Wall Street Journal reported the day of Trump's declaration that his action was the outcome of "two years of political neglect of his signature campaign promise, lost amid competing priorities and divisions within his administration," with no single administration official having been designated to champion funding of the border wall in Congress. Trump rejected a proposal in January 2018 that would have authorized $25 billion for wall construction in exchange for a path to citizenship for Dreamers, as well as a similar proposal the next month. In March, Congress approved a bill providing for $1.6 billion in barrier funding. Threatening to veto the bill, The Journal reported that Trump was surprised to learn that the $1.6 billion was the amount that had been requested in his budget. Trump's budget director Mick Mulvaney then privately advised the president to blame House speaker Paul Ryan for not seeking more funding. Tom Davis, an influential former Republican congressman, observed, "The mistake they made was not coming in right away and coming up with a plan. You wonder why they didn't try to jam this through when Republicans controlled the House because it's a lot more complicated now trying to convince Nancy Pelosi."
2018–2019 government shutdown
Before Trump declared the national emergency, the United States had experienced a federal government shutdown, which ran from midnight EST on December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019 (35 days). It was the longest U.S. government shutdown in history. It occurred when the United States Congress and President could not agree on an appropriations bill to fund the operations of the federal government for the 2019 fiscal year. The shutdown affected about one-fourth of government activities. It caused around 800,000 employees and 1 million federal contractors to be furloughed or obligated to work without pay. The shutdown was estimated by the Congressional Budget Office to cost the United States economy at least $11 billion.Excluding indirect costs that were difficult to quantify.
The President had demanded that the appropriations bill include for $5.7 billion in federal funds for a proposed U.S.–Mexico border wall. In December 2018, the Republican-controlled Senate unanimously passed an appropriations bill without wall funding. However, Trump refused to support the bill, and it was therefore not considered by the Republican-controlled House.
By mid-January 2019, American opposition to the shutdown had become widespread. That month, representatives elected in November 2018 took office. The newly Democrat-controlled House approved the appropriations bill that had earlier passed the Senate unanimously. Trump said he would still veto any bill that did not fund an entire border wall. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked the Senate from considering appropriations legislation that Trump would veto, including the bill that the Senate had earlier passed. Democrats and some Republicans passed multiple bills attempting to reopen the government.
On January 25, 2019, Trump agreed to endorse a stopgap bill to reopen the government until February 15. However, he reiterated his demand for the border wall funding and said he would shut down the government again or declare a national emergency and use military funding to build the wall if Congress did not appropriate the funds by February 15.
On February 14, the House and Senate passed an appropriations bill funding the government until September 30, the end of the fiscal year 2019. Trump signed the bill into law the following day. The bill includes US$1.375 billion to construct new fencing on of the Mexico–United States border.
Announcement
On February 15, 2019, President Trump spoke to the media in the White House Rose Garden. After signing the spending bill to keep the government open, Trump declared a national emergency over the border crisis, hoping to get access to $8 billion to use for border security. During his announcement, Trump stated, "I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster." Critics asserted this statement would undercut the rationale for his emergency declaration in court challenges.
Funding To obtain $8 billion for border wall construction, the Trump administration proposed augmenting the earlier February 14 $1.375 billion appropriations bill by diverting other previously allocated monies: $3.6 billion for military construction, $2.5 billion for the Department of Defense's counter-drug activities, and $600 million from Treasury's drug-asset forfeiture funds. White House officials said that the national emergency specifically enabled the $3.6 billion military diversion while the $2.5 billion from Defense and the $600 million from Treasury were possible due to "presidential discretion".
This was the first time since the September 11 attacks in 2001 that an emergency declaration authorized military action.
Roll Call reported on February 21, 2019, that over one-third of the funds the Trump administration had identified for diversion had already been spent by the Department of Defense. In March 2019 the Pentagon issued a list of proposed military construction projects which could be postponed, under the president's emergency declaration, so that their funding could be diverted to build the wall. The Pentagon authorized up to $1 billion to be transferred to the Army Corps of Engineers for construction of additional barriers.
Legislative action to overturn and presidential veto Under the national emergency legislation, Congress can overturn a declaration of emergency legislatively. If the House passes a privileged resolution to overturn, the Senate is required to take up the resolution within eighteen days. If the Senate passes the resolution, by a simple majority vote, the bill goes to the president, who has the option of vetoing it. Congress can override the veto by a two-thirds vote in both houses.
House speaker Nancy Pelosi announced on February 20, 2019, that Democrats would introduce such a resolution in two days. The measure, House Joint Resolution 46, stated: "Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That, pursuant to section 202 of the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1622), the national emergency declared by the finding of the President on February 15, 2019, in Proclamation 9844 (84 Fed. Reg. 4949) is hereby terminated."