Can Trump Close the Border?
FAIR shows appellate court the President has that power
(Sept, 2, 2025, Washington, D.C.) In the early days of Donald Trump’s second term as President, he issued a proclamation stating that the United States was being invaded at the southern border and sent troops to help repel that invasion and close the border. So far, his efforts have been spectacularly successful; encounters with illegal aliens atthe border have plummeted.
But anti-borders activist plaintiffs brought suit in DC federal district court, claiming that the President had exceeded his lawful power. The district court agreed, concluding that the government could only use standard, lengthy removal proceedings—not proclamations, troops, and expulsions—to deal with the flood of unlawful crossings, and granted an injunction against the administration’s border closure.
In response, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) filed a brief last Friday in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals urging the court to vacate that injunction.
In its brief, FAIR shows that the questions of whether the states are being invaded and how to stop the invasion are not for courts to decide. Rather, they are placed in the discretion of the President in Article IV, section 4, of the Constitution, which provides that the federal government must protect the states from invasion.
FAIR also shows that the President not only has inherent, constitutional power to expel aliens, but that a law passed by Congress in 1952 gives him exceedingly broad powers to suspend the entry of aliens. In fact, in the cases upholding Trump’s travel restrictions in his first term, the Supreme Court refused to set any limits to the President’s discretion under this law. He is free to find the entry of any class of aliens detrimental to the national interest and suspend the entry of such aliens.
And, FAIR points out, the DC Circuit has already held that, at the border, such a power implies the enforcement mechanism of expulsion.
“It is disturbing to find a federal district court stripping the President not only of his constitutional power, but of power that Congress very deliberately and explicitly gave him,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director and general counsel of FAIR. “The President saw that ordinary removal procedures were not enough to solve this crisis and invoked his clear statutory authority to get the job done for the American people. We hope the DC Circuit refuses to let the President’s power and flexibility in this vital area be annulled and vacates the injunction.”
The case is Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services v. Noem, No. 25-5243 (DC Circuit).
