There Is No National Emergency

By Theodore Shoebat

When I see this “national emergency” declaration  coming from Trump, the first question that comes to my mind is: where is the national emergency? Is there a national emergency. Well, in Trump’s declaration of a national emergency, the president admits: “I didn’t need to do this”. If there was really a national emergency, then you would indeed have to declare it. The fact that Trump didn’t need to declare a national emergency signifies that there is no national emergency, just as there were no “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq. As California Attorney General Xavier Becerra remarked:

“President Trump got one thing right this morning about his declaration when he said, ‘I didn’t have to do this.’ He’s right, he didn’t have to do this … In fact, he can’t do this because the U.S. Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to direct dollars.”

Trump claims that a border wall will fix the problem with drugs coming in through the border. But the thing is that most of the drugs are coming in through the ports of entry. Plus, the level of migrants caught at the border is lower than it was ten years ago. As we read from a report published by USA Today:

U.S. government data from the southern border indicates the vast majority of narcotics captured at the border is coming in through ports of entry, not the wide swaths of border in between where additional barriers could be erected. And the number of migrants apprehended for trying to enter the U.S. illegally is significantly less than it was a decade ago.

Apprehensions along the southern border are actually at historic lows. Border Patrol routinely apprehended more than 1 million people a year – peaking at 1.6 million in 2000 – throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. In 2017, it apprehended just over 300,000. It 2018, it apprehended just under 400,000.

Also, since most of the drugs are coming through the ports of entry, that is an indicator that people at the security check are getting paid off to let drugs in. This was affirmed by former undercover DEA agent Celerino Castillo III in an insightful interview with VICE which I encourage you to watch:

In November of 2018, the Drug Enforcement Administration reported:

“The most common method employed by these [transnational criminal organizations] involves transporting illicit drugs through U.S. [ports of entry] in passenger vehicles with concealed compartments or commingled with legitimate goods on tractor trailers”

Since the September 11th attacks, there were 455 terrorists charged or convicted or who died before facing trial. Do you know how many of them came in through an empty spot on the Mexican border? None. 84% of that 455 were US citizens or permanent residents, and every lethal terrorist attack in the United States since 9/11 was done by a US citizen or legal resident.

This is from a report published by CNN. I know people will then come out to argue and say that the Center for Immigration Studies says that a confirmed 15 terrorists have been caught at the border since 2001. As it states:

From only public realm reporting, 15 suspected terrorists have been apprehended at the U.S.-Mexico border, or en route, since 2001.

The 15 terrorism-associated migrants who traveled to the U.S. southern border likely represent a significant under-count since most information reflecting such border-crossers resides in classified or protected government archives and intelligence databases.

At least five of the 15 were prosecuted for crimes in North American courts. One is currently under Canadian prosecution for multiple attempted murder counts. Of the four in the United States, one was prosecuted for lying to the FBI about terrorism involvement, one for asylum fraud, one for providing material support to a terrorist organization, and one for illegal entry, false statements, and passport mutilation

For one, these terrorists were apprehended at the border, meaning that they were caught at the ports of entry, not on an empty spot on the border.

The study was written in 2018. So, it is confirmed, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, that 15 terrorists were caught at the border, from 2001 to 2018. Even if you take this report to back Trump …

…. this is not a national emergency.

Sarah Sanders repeatedly said that four thousand terrorists were caught at the border. I am sure many of Trump’s followers were sighting this number to prove a national emergency. But the reality is, it was a lie. As a report written by Alan Gomez says:

In the days leading up to President Donald Trump’s televised address to the nation Tuesday night to promote his southern border wall, administration officials justified the proposal by claiming that thousands of terrorists pour across that border.

Data and analysis from Trump’s own administration drastically undercut that message, calling into question whether the situation along the U.S.-Mexican border is truly a “national emergency” as Trump said.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said Friday that Customs and Border Protection officials caught nearly 4,000 known or suspected terrorists “that came across our southern border.” She repeated that on talk shows throughout the weekend, and Vice President Mike Pence used the same data point during an appearance on “Good Morning America” on Tuesday.

But in the State Department’s summary of global terrorism threats published in September, analysts concluded there was “no credible evidence indicating that international terrorist groups … sent operatives via Mexico into the United States.”

Monday, NBC News reported that the number of known or suspected terrorists caught along the southern border in the first half of 2018 was about 1 percent of the Trump administration’s claim. According to Customs and Border Protection data provided to Congress, the agency encountered 41 people on the Terrorist Screening Database from Oct. 1, 2017, to March 31, 2018, along the U.S.-Mexican border. Thirty-five of them  were American citizens or lawful permanent residents, and only six  were classified as non-U.S. persons.

Monday night, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway acknowledged in an appearance on Fox News that Sanders conflated two very different statistics while trying to make her argument. In fiscal year 2017, federal officials stopped 3,755 people on the terrorist watch list from traveling to or entering the USA, but that includes people traveling through airports, seaports and land ports. The majority of those tried to enter by air.

This is not a national emergency….

They will argue and say, ‘Well in 2018 3,000 people were caught by agents and classified as “special interest aliens.”‘ But this term does not necessarily mean terrorist but that they came from 35 countries deemed to be of “special interest” after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks because of their historic ties to terrorism. As the Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen acknowledged:

“This does not mean that all (special interest aliens) are ‘terrorists,’ but rather that the travel and behavior of such individuals indicates a possible nexus to nefarious activity (including terrorism) and, at a minimum, provides indicators that necessitate heightened screening and further investigation … The term (special interest alien) does not indicate any specific derogatory information about the individual – and DHS has never indicated that the (special interest alien) designation means more than that.”

This is not a national emergency…

Chris Wallace grilled Sarah Sanders well about this:

Counterterrorism experts have said that there never has been a case of a terrorist walking into the United States through an open gap on the border and committing a terrorist attack. As a report from the New York Times states:

“But his [Trump’s] own government’s assessments conclude that Mr. Trump has seriously overstated the threat. And counterterrorism officials and experts said there had never been a case of a known terrorist sneaking into the country through open areas of the southwest border.

…

Counterterrorism officials have long discounted the threat of Islamic State or Qaeda terrorists entering through the southwest border. In some cases, the opposite has happened, said Seamus Hughes, the deputy director of George Washington University’s program on extremism, citing homegrown American extremists who crossed into Mexico to avoid being detected on no-fly lists.

Officials included the case of Jason Ludke of Milwaukee, who pleaded guilty in October to conspiring to provide material support to the Islamic State. He and a co-conspirator were headed to the border in Texas, with plans to join the Islamic State in Syria or Iraq, when they were arrested.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said that this is not a national emergency:

“I think declaring a national emergency where there is no national emergency is not good for the president to do. In fact, I don’t think it’s good for a precedent for future presidents”

Nicholas J. Rasmussen, the former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, said:

“There is no wave of terrorist operatives waiting to cross overland into the United States … It simply isn’t true.”

As far as crime coming in from the border, there are definitely criminals from Mexico. But this idea that it is of the level of a national emergency is to me a move done for other motivations. Even if you look at El Paso, the biggest city on the border, the crime rates there are not immense. Beginning in 2005 there was a huge decline in crime in El Paso:

El Paso’s violent crime rate has declined steadily since the mid-90s, following a general decline in other large cities and the country as whole. According to a report from the El Paso Times: “Violent crime in El Paso has been substantively lower than the average violent crime rate of the other 32 cities throughout the entire period being studied. In fact, El Paso has been in the top 10 (out of the 33) in terms of safety (i.e., lowest levels of violent crime) beginning in 1995, and has consistently ranked among the top 5 safest since 2004.”

This is not to say that I have an issue with the idea of a border wall. I don’t, as longs as its sincerely about national security. What I do have an issue with is exaggerations and motives behind pretexts.

Going back to the push for “the wall,” I would not be surprised that its more about riling up nationalism than it is about an actual barrier. What is interesting is the parallel between now and the type of jargon that was being communicated back in the first half of the 21st century. There was a man by the name of Charles Davenport, a major figure in the American eugenics movement, who said in 1920, in a letter to fellow eugenist Madison Grant:

“Can we build a wall high enough around this country … so as to keep out these cheaper races, or will it be a feeble dam … leaving it to our descendants to abandon the country to the blacks, browns and yellows.”

Now, Trump has not called for his wall with such rhetoric. But look at who Trump collaborated with: Stefan Bannon, a conspirator who is pushing for nationalism in both the United States and Europe, who works in his conspiracy with neo-Nazi Filip DeWinter. Also, lets remember that Trump has expressed pride in his genetic makeup:

Trump sees himself as belonging to some genetic elite. So it would not be surprising that Trump is part of some sort of eugenist agenda.