On Friday, Feb. 15, Trump declared a national emergency over the border wall, invoking emergency presidential powers that he intends to use to fund the wall, as a direct response to the most recent spending bill proposed by Congress that did not provide him with his desired funding. However, many are calling the legality of his decision into question as to whether or not he is allowed to bypass Congress in the intended way and as to whether the wall situation is worthy of a national emergency. Trump’s use of emergency powers, should it be deemed legal by courts, will set a poor precedent for future presidents and will show that presidents are allowed to abuse checks and balances in order to promote personal agendas.

But first, it’s important to understand what a “national emergency” is. In 1976, Congress passed the National Emergencies Act, which formalized special powers for the president that could be used in times of crisis when immediate, procedural action is required. Historically, most presidents have invoked the powers designated by the act for national security threats such as 9/11, foreign military threats, human rights violations, cyber attacks, election tampering and the like. The act has even been utilized for domestic issues like when, in 2009, Obama declared a national security emergency over the H1N1 flu virus epidemic in order to activate disaster plans to set up proper patient treatment.

In this context, Trump’s use of the act over the border wall is incongruent with past uses. The rhetoric that Trump has built up over the border situation is hyperbolic and has been used to manufacture a crisis. Regardless of one’s views on immigration, illegal or not, the “very dangerous southern border” that Trump described in his most recent State of the Union Address simply isn’t true. If anything, as shown by the graph from BBC, illegal immigration at the Mexican border has been dropping significantly since the early 2000s.

If the numbers of people attempting to enter through the southern U.S. border back in 2000 weren’t worthy of a national emergency, then why are the relatively very low numbers of today suddenly so pressing?

Additionally, NPR analyzed that the majority of illegal immigrants don’t even enter through the southern border at all; in fact, most illegals merely overstay their visas. By their estimates, the number of people who overstay their visas is more than double the number of people apprehended at the border. While the number of individuals at our southern border is nothing to completely ignore, it doesn’t qualify the use of the National Emergencies Act.

If there has been anything the past few years that has been worthy of emergency powers, it would have been the opioid epidemic or the escalations with North Korea. In 2017, more Americans died from prescribed opioids than illegal immigrant related crimes. Back in June of 2018, Trump made a false claim that since 2001, 63,000 Americans have been killed by undocumented immigrants (this was disproved several times over and actual ICE criminal reports show numbers not even close to that—closer to only one or two thousand). Comparatively, 70,237 Americans died in 2017 as a consequence of the opioid epidemic, a number up by 7,000 from the previous year. The Trump administration has blown the undocumented immigrant problem out of proportion and is focusing on the wrong crises; his definition of a “national emergency” is skewed.

In reality, Trump’s use of his emergency powers is only being used to forcefully squeeze money out of Congress and the military in order to fund his wall. The bipartisan spending bill recently presented to Trump only provided him with $1.38 billion for 55 miles of border barriers, nothing close to the $5.7 billion he initially demanded. Now, he will take roughly $6.7 billion from military and other sources, without the approval of Congress. By doing so, he undermines one of the most important constitutional powers provided to Congress, the power of the purse.

Should this use of the National Emergencies Act be deemed legal, which it likely won’t be, it will demonstrate to future presidents that it is possible to abuse legal powers in order to promote personal political agendas. The border wall is merely an early campaign promise that Trump will try to attain by any means necessary, even if it means circumventing Congress completely. By no means is the border wall a national emergency, and Trump’s attempt to undermine the system of checks and balances should be stopped.