{"id":57137,"date":"2019-02-15T21:47:10","date_gmt":"2019-02-15T21:47:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/uncategorized\/2019\/02\/15\/troops-do-not-view-immigration-as-a-national-emergency-not-even-close\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T09:35:39","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T09:35:39","slug":"troops-do-not-view-immigration-as-a-national-emergency-not-even-close","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/navytimes\/news\/your-navy\/2019\/02\/15\/troops-do-not-view-immigration-as-a-national-emergency-not-even-close\/","title":{"rendered":"Troops do not view immigration as a \u2018national emergency.\u2019 Not even close."},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Unlike President Donald Trump, troops don\u2019t seem to view either immigration across our southern border or Mexico itself as much of a national-security threat, the results of a recent <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2018\/10\/15\/support-for-trump-is-fading-among-active-duty-troops-new-poll-shows\/\" target=\"_blank\">Military Times poll<\/a> suggest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On Friday, Trump <a href=\"https:\/\/www.militarytimes.com\/news\/pentagon-congress\/2019\/02\/15\/white-house-promises-using-military-funds-to-build-trumps-border-wall-wont-hurt-force-readiness\/\" target=\"_blank\">declared a national emergency<\/a> along the U.S. border with Mexico, in order to secure funding for his long-proposed border wall, which Congress has refused to fund. The $8 billion border wall will be partially funded by $3.6 billion meant for military construction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cWe fight wars 6,000 miles away, many we don\u2019t have any business being in, but we don\u2019t fight the wars at our own border,\u201d Trump said during a Rose Garden press conference. \u201cWe have tremendous amounts of drugs flowing into our country, much of it coming from the southern border \u2026 They say walls don\u2019t work, but walks work 100 percent.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">An October Military Times poll of nearly 900 active-duty troops found that 60 percent believed immigration was either a small threat to U.S. national security or no threat at all. Only 23 percent labeled the issue as a significant or very significant threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Likewise, 77 percent of respondents viewed Mexico as a small threat or none whatsoever, and only 9 percent described it as a significant or very significant threat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Much more pressing concerns, in the eyes of troops, included cyberterrorism, Russia and China. White nationalists were also viewed as a greater threat than immigration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"infogram-embed\" data-id=\"e84874ab-bbc0-46a8-940f-efc645dad3b6\"\ndata-type=\"interactive\" data-title=\"Most Significant Threats to U.S. Security\"><\/div>\n<script>\n  !function(e,t,s,i){var n=\"InfogramEmbeds\",o=e.getElementsByTagName(\"script\")[0],d=\/^http:\/.test(e.location)?\"http:\":\"https:\";if(\/^\\\/{2}\/.test(i)&&(i=d+i),window[n]&&window[n].initialized)window[n].process&&window[n].process();else if(!e.getElementById(s)){var r=e.createElement(\"script\");r.async=1,r.id=s,r.src=i,o.parentNode.insertBefore(r,o)}}(document,0,\"infogram-async\",\"https:\/\/e.infogram.com\/js\/dist\/embed-loader-min.js\");\n<\/script>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">White House officials on Friday brought up <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/02\/15\/us\/politics\/national-emergency-trump.html\" target=_blank>two instances<\/a> in which presidents have declared a national emergency to use money without Congress\u2019 approval: once in 1990 by George H.W. Bush after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait and again in 2001 by George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Both Bushes were responding to specific acts of aggression, and both used military funds for different military purposes. Neither is the case with Trump\u2019s declaration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cI think he\u2019s within the law to do what he\u2019s doing,\u201d said Blas Nunez-Neto, a senior policy researcher at the RAND Corporation specializing in homeland and border security. \u201cIt\u2019s a question of whether Congress agrees and whether the courts agree that the current situation can be construed as a national-security emergency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cHistorically, these kinds of powers have generally been used for war or war-like situations, and this does not appear to meet that bar,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nunez-Neto said he wasn\u2019t surprised that the military doesn\u2019t view Mexico as a particularly large threat, given our mostly positive relationship with our neighbor to the south pre-Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He also said that what\u2019s currently going on at our border isn\u2019t \u201csubstantially different\u201d from immigration flow over the last few years, except for an increase in Central American families fleeing their countries to seek asylum in the U.S.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What makes this group different than your typical illegal immigrant, Nunez-Neto said, is that they aren\u2019t \u201ctrying to avoid detection,\u201d and are in fact turning themselves over to officers at ports of entry to enter the asylum process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a grueling, dangerous journey with no guarantee of success when they finally reach the border.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cThese families have made a decision that it\u2019s worth subjecting themselves to those risks because they can come here and claim asylum,\u201d Nunez-Neto said. \u201cOur system has created an incentive for families to do this. We have to come together in Congress to figure out ways to minimize those incentives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the question of whether Trump\u2019s declaration can be reversed, Nunez-Neto explained that Congress can try to pass legislation stopping it. New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro have already vowed to introduce a bill to do just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Nunez-Neto also said that local jurisdictions where the wall is being built can sue to stop its construction as well, a process that would take longer but is \u201cone that many people would anticipate would end up at the Supreme Court.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He added that the wall doesn\u2019t address the influx of Central Americans seeking asylum, which he believes is a bigger problem than immigrants from Mexico.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;It\u2019s not clear to me that constructing additional barriers will have much of an effect on that population,\u201d Nunze-Neto said. \u201cIf the people who have been arriving in increasing numbers are not trying to evade detection, I\u2019m not sure a barrier will really address that flow.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">.<a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/JoaquinCastrotx?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@JoaquinCastrotx<\/a> and I aren\u2019t going to let the President declare a fake national emergency without a fight. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iPlcVVsm6U\">https:\/\/t.co\/iPlcVVsm6U<\/a><\/p>&mdash; Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/AOC\/status\/1096427139971334145?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 15, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Both immigration and Mexico itself were perceived as relatively small threats compared to more pressing concerns like cyberterrorism, Russia and China.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":55035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":65,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[101,23,89,12,26,62,65],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3044],"class_list":["post-57137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-home","category-middle-column","category-news","category-newsletters","category-pentagon-congress","category-your-navy"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"SAJTILKHYFFO7AW7LWC5VOGC4U","arc_canonical_url":"\/news\/your-military\/2019\/02\/15\/troops-do-not-view-immigration-as-a-national-emergency-not-even-close\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented 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