Washington, DC — Yesterday, leading Senate and House Democrats joined with the ACLU and the Brennan Center for Justice to issue a letter to President Trump, condemning the administration’s reliance on the “legally and factually unfounded” and dangerous “invasion” conspiracy theory as the justification to trample on “civil liberties and the constitutional separation of powers” and to advance the administration’s extreme immigration agenda. As NBC News reported, the letter “could be a precursor to legal action.”
The letter, available here, notes that the Trump administration’s assertion of an “invasion ‘triggers unilateral presidential power over immigration, including the power to suspend or disregard laws that Congress has duly enacted’ and states, “As courts have consistently held, an ‘invasion’ under the Constitution requires ‘armed hostility from another political entity, such as another state or foreign country that is intending to overthrow the [] government.’ … Under our constitutional design, these exceptional powers are reserved for times of armed conflict; they are not available to respond to migration or other non-military matters.”
The new letter focuses on the false legal and factual nature of Trump’s “invasion” assertions. In addition to the misguided legal assertion, America’s Voice has long highlighted the larger dangers of the Trump and right-wing use and mainstreaming of “invasion” and “replacement” rhetoric, establishing the clear link between these white nationalist conspiracy theories and the deadly consequences linked to multiple massacres and acts of violence in places like Buffalo, El Paso and Pittsburgh. Over the past few years, several Democratic members of Congress, including Rep. Jamie Raskin, Rep. Jerry Nadler, Rep. Hank Johnson, among others, have publicly called out their Republicans colleagues who used this dangerous and deadly rhetoric.
According to Vanessa Cárdenas, Executive Director of America’s Voice:
“The invasion rhetoric is not just dangerous in that it stokes fears and inflames divides, but also is being used as justification for a host of extreme anti-immigrant policies and larger attacks on our American democracy. It’s all based on the false notion that we are under attack which must be fought with force. Let’s be clear that those truly threatening our democracy and orchestrating political violence are not immigrants, but the ascendant right-wing movement that has embraced white nationalism and nativism to remake America in the MAGA image, all while trampling on core American democratic values, our civil liberties, the peaceful transfer of power, and even the Constitution.
While it can be easy to be desensitized to the ‘invasion’ language from President Trump and his right wing allies we can’t allow ourselves to forget that the President of the United States continues to rely on a white nationalist conspiracy theory, which is linked to multiple massacres and deadly acts on violence in places like Buffalo, El Paso and Pittsburgh. In the 2024 cycle alone, GOP-aligned campaigns spent more than $1 billion on anti-immigrant advertising and messaging, including nearly 1,000 different ads that included the ‘invasion’ conspiracy.”
Additional Resources
- Read the new letter from Senators Durbin and Padilla, Reps. Jayapal and Raskin and the ACLU and Brennan Center for Justice here
- Read the February press release and letter from 82 organizations, led by Western States Center, calling on Congress to stop legitimizing the dangerous “invasion” conspiracy theory
- Read America’s Voice research on the scope of Republican-allied efforts to normalize “invasion” and white nationalist conspiracy language
- Read the America’s Voice report, “Two Years After the Deadly Terror Attack in Buffalo, the Replacement Theory has Only Gone More Mainstream”
