POWERLINE 11/28/2025
Scott has already written about President Trump’s national address on the shooting of National Guardsmen in D.C. as well as his Thanksgiving Day tweet promising to do something about the country’s immigration mess. I want to offer additional thoughts on the measures that Trump says he intends to take with regard to immigration.
First, this is the portion of Trump’s tweet where he describes what he intends to do:
I will permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries to allow the U.S. system to fully recover, terminate all of the millions of Biden illegal admissions, including those signed by Sleepy Joe Biden’s Autopen, and remove anyone who is not a net asset to the United States, or is incapable of loving our Country, end all Federal benefits and subsidies to noncitizens of our Country, denaturalize migrants who undermine domestic tranquility, and deport any Foreign National who is a public charge, security risk, or non-compatible with Western Civilization.
Can Trump actually do those things? The most significant is the first: Trump’s pledge to “permanently pause migration from all Third World Countries….” It is reasonably clear, I think, that Trump can do this. 8 U. S. C. §1182(f) says:
Whenever the President finds that the entry of any aliens or of any class of aliens into the United States would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, he may by proclamation, and for such period as he shall deem necessary, suspend the entry of all aliens or any class of aliens as immigrants or nonimmigrants, or impose on the entry of aliens any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate.
That grant of authority is obviously very broad. In Trump v. Hawaii, the case that arose out of an order suspending certain immigration during the first Trump term, the Supreme Court said:
By its terms, §1182(f) exudes deference to the President in every clause. It entrusts to the President the decisions whether and when to suspend entry (“[w]henever [he] finds that the entry” of aliens “would be detrimental” to the national interest); whose entry to suspend (“all aliens or any class of aliens”); for how long (“for such period as he shall deem necessary”); and on what conditions (“any restrictions he may deem to be appropriate”). It is therefore unsurprising that we have previously observed that §1182(f) vests the President with “ample power” to impose entry restrictions in addition to those elsewhere enumerated in the INA.
More:
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2025/11/trump-on-immigration-can-he-do-it.php
