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President announces southern border emergency, troop deployments and cartel FTO designations
Summary
The president announced a national emergency at the southern border, said he would send troops to the border, reinstate the "remain in Mexico" policy, end catch-and-release and designate cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798.
The president announced that he would declare a national emergency at the southern border and take multiple immediate actions intended to halt illegal entry and remove criminal noncitizens.
The president said, “I will declare a national emergency at our southern border. All illegal entry will immediately be halted,” and announced plans to “begin the process of returning 1,000,000 and 1,000,000 of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came.” He said he would reinstate the “remain in Mexico” policy and end “the practice of catch and release.”
The president also said he would send troops to the southern border “to repel the disastrous invasion of our country.” He said his administration would designate the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations and invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to direct law enforcement action: “By invoking the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, I will direct our government to use the full and immense power of federal and state law enforcement to eliminate the presence of all foreign gangs and criminal networks.”
The remarks are a public announcement of executive actions; the speech did not include implementing details such as timelines, legal memos, or which agencies will take specific steps. The president framed these actions as immediate and sweeping; the transcript does not include follow-up specifics about the number of troops, funding, or coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Defense or the Department of State.
Implementation of many of the announced measures would typically require interagency orders, Department of Defense approval for troop deployments, Department of State involvement for designations that affect foreign relations, and possible legal review. The president’s invocation of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 was explicit in the speech; no other statutes were named in the border section.
Observers should note that the announcement in the speech does not itself contain the administrative steps—such as signed executive orders, interagency directives, or Federal Register notices—required to effect many of the actions the president described.
