Donald Trump has defied strong criticism to announce that he is using emergency powers to bypass Congress and pursue the building of a wall on the US-Mexico border.
Speaking in the White House Rose Garden this morning, Trump insisted he had no choice but to declare a national emergency to deal with what he describes as a crisis of illegal immigration.
“I’m going to be signing a national emergency, and it’s been signed many times before. It’s been signed by other presidents from 1977 or so it gave the presidents the power,” Trump said. “There’s rarely been a problem. They sign it, nobody cares. I guess they weren’t very exciting.”
Trump said that he is doing this “to address an invasion of our country with drugs, with human traffickers, with all types of criminals and gangs.”
“We don’t control our own border,” Trump said. “We’re going to confront the national security crisis on our southern border and we’re going to do it – one way or the other we have to do it.”
