Don't just take Axios' word for it. Go to the source, in this case on the source's own social-media platform. 

Donald Trump picked up on a message posted ten days ago by Judicial Watch's Tom Fitton to confirm its veracity. Fitton wrote three days after the election that Trump would declare a national emergency over the "Biden invasion" at the southern border in order to use military assets to deport illegal aliens. Trump reposted Fitton's message with "TRUE!!!", and Fitton made sure to get the word out on Twitter/X as well:

HUGE: President @RealDonaldTrump confirms he is prepared to declare a national emergency and use the military assets to reverse the Biden invasion. pic.twitter.com/XnqW121GnQ

— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) November 18, 2024

"Huge" is right, in more ways than one. Axios reminds everyone of the scope of such a program as a caution on its ambition. It serves, however, to remind everyone that the mass migration of the last three-plus years clearly meets the political definition of a "national emergency":

The big picture: There are an estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump's mass deportations are expected to impact roughly 20 million families across the country.

• Immigration advocates and lawyers are preparing to counter the plan in court.
• The president-elect's team is aiming to craft executive orders that can withstand legal challenges to avoid a similar defeat that befell Trump's Muslim ban in his first term, Politico reported.
• Their plans also include ending the parole program for undocumented immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela, per Politico.

That 11-million estimate of illegal aliens seems low; millions poured over the border on Biden's watch alone, creating all sorts of crime and housing issues, this time not just in the border states. That's why immigration and border security played such a large role in this election, and why Kamala Harris tried so hard to keep from being tagged the "border czar." Voters overwhelmingly considered the massive stampede into the country to be a national emergency, and they voted accordingly for a president who took it seriously. 

This time the Trump team has decided to plan for it more seriously, too. Politico reports that the transition team has already begun laying out plans for executive orders to use presidential authority where it exists to round up illegal aliens, and then to press Congress for action where necessary:

In his first 100 days, President-elect Donald Trump plans to begin the process of deporting hundreds of thousands of people. He is expected to end parole for people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. And he is likely to undo a policy that significantly constrained deportations for people who weren’t deemed threats to public safety or national security.

Trump’s team is already thinking about how to craft executive actions aimed to withstand the legal challenges from immigrants’ rights groups — all in hopes of avoiding an early defeat like the one his 2017 travel ban targeting majority-Muslim nations suffered. This time, Trump may have friendlier arbiters. These fights will be refereed by a federal judiciary that he transformed during his first term, including by appointing more than 200 federal judges himself. And at the very top — the ultimate decider of these questions — is the Supreme Court, to which he appointed three conservative justices.

But legal fights aren’t the only long-term challenge Trump’s ambitious immigration agenda will face. The logistical challenges of mass deportation are a little harder to predict. The speed at which Trump could remake deportation policy depends on surmounting tactical challenges like expanding detention capacity and cutting through a massive immigration court backlog.

How much of a hurdle is the backlog? Most of the catch-and-release crowd fail to appear for their court dates, and that's enough to warrant deportation. All it takes is enough personnel to arrest them for absconding and then getting deportation orders. That's more money than logistics, and even the detention capacity isn't all that much of an obstacle once that process is in place. 

The key to longer-term success will be in re-establishing border security and blocking asylum seekers from entering at all without adjudication. That means restarting Remain in Mexico, a program that all but entirely disincentivized illegal border crossings. Politico offers a skeptical note on that effort, but the media was pretty skeptical about it the first time too:

Trump has also said he would restore his Remain in Mexico policy — officially called Migrant Protection Protocols — that required some asylum-seekers to stay south of the U.S.-Mexican border while they await immigration court hearings. But this will require the Trump administration to reach a deal with Mexico to restart the program.

That won't be much of a problem. Trump forced Mexico to cooperate by threatening ruinous tariffs on their exports, and that will likely be the same lever he uses this time. Mexico may not even wait for that threat to be made public; they know what's coming, and they're already likely worried about what Trump wants to do in renegotiating the USMCA trade agreement. 

What about using the military? That will have its own challenges, but perhaps not as many as people may think, even without the declaration of a national emergency. The Posse Comitatus Act forbids the use of military forces in civilian law enforcement, but enforcing federal immigration law is a gray area, given the federal government's supremacy in such matters. 

Trump will call the mass illegal immigration an "invasion" in any declaration, which is an exception to the PCA in itself. Will that work, and is it even necessary? The Congressional Research Service explained in 2018 that the PCA is actually more limited than commonly thought:

Case law indicates that “execution of the law” in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act occurs (a) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to an organ of civil government, or (b) when the Armed Forces perform tasks assigned to them solely for purposes of civilian government. Questions concerning the act’s application arise most often in the context of assistance to civilian police. At least in this context, the courts have held that, absent a recognized exception, the Posse Comitatus Act is violated when (1) civilian law enforcement officials make “direct active use” of military investigators; or (2) the use of the military “pervades the activities” of the civilian officials; or (3) the military is used so as to subject “citizens to the exercise of military power which was regulatory, prescriptive, or compulsory in nature.”

Using the military to round up people who illegally violated the border to enter the country on this scale does not "pervade the activities" of civilian officials, especially at the state or local level. (That's even more true in "sanctuary" jurisdictions where civilian authorities refuse to perform those duties.) It does not create a situation of martial law for US citizens or any communities. Granted, this will get challenged in court, vigorously and constructively, but the PCA may not be much of an impediment to Trump's plans. 

Trump will no doubt welcome that. While those legal fights continue, Trump will use DHS resources and authorities to their limit to get as many illegal aliens out of the country as quickly as possible. And in this current political environment, he won't pay much of a price for enthusiasm, either. 

Update: VIP member A.W. Guerra adds this in the comments:

Before all the hyperventilating about using the military to do this really gets going, it's probably more about freeing up ICE and CBP assets currently safeguarding the border frontiers, north and south, than sending anything remotely resembling something out of 1999's "The Siege" into American cities to smoke these folks out.

That's a good point, and yet another way in which the PCA won't apply. A.W. has more in the comments below ... and if you want to join us there, become a HotAir VIP member today and use promo code FAKENEWS to receive a 50% discount on your membership.