An impressive list of 58 former national security officials — who served under both Republican and Democratic presidents — have released a declaration attacking the fiction that there is an “emergency” along the southern border, justifying President Trump’s power grab. Coming on the eve of Tuesday’s House vote on a resolution to short-circuit the declaration, it makes clear the degree to which Republican lawmakers will endanger national security to stay on Trump’s good side.
The officials state:
At the outset, there is no evidence of a sudden or emergency increase in the number of people seeking to cross the southern border. According to the administration’s own data, the numbers of apprehensions and undetected illegal border crossings at the southern border are near forty-year lows. Although there was a modest increase in apprehensions in 2018, that figure is in keeping with the number of apprehensions only two years earlier, and the overall trend indicates a dramatic decline over the last fifteen years in particular.
They also make clear, “There is no reason to believe that there is a terrorist or national security emergency at the southern border that could justify the President’s proclamation.”
View the complete commentary by Jennifer Rubin on The Washington Post website here.