Across the United States, Americans of all backgrounds recognize Juneteenth on June 19, commemorating the day in 1865 when enslaved people in Confederate-held Texas learned of President Abraham Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation.
The same legal reasoning that ended slavery also supports a president’s authority to remove foreign nationals designated as domestic terrorists. President Donald Trump has the constitutional power to act in the interest of national security by deporting those who threaten the country.
When we celebrate Juneteenth, we implicitly acknowledge broad presidential national security powers.
Lawyers and judges study statutes and decide cases, but they rarely confront the true scope of executive power. The Constitution designates the president as commander in chief, but it provides little detail on the extent of that authority.
The closest legal precedent on executive power is Korematsu v. United States (1944), in which the Supreme Court upheld the race-based internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1983, U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Patel overturned the decision as applied to Fred Korematsu and others, but the broader question of presidential national security powers remained unresolved.
President Trump does not need to justify his actions under the much-criticized Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Instead, he should invoke the same principle that underlies Juneteenth: the federal government’s power to secure liberty by enforcing the law and protecting the nation.
At the time of the Civil War, slaves were considered the property of their owners, and the Fifth Amendment dictated that the government could not emancipate them without due process and just compensation paid to their owners. Additionally, the execrable 1857 Dred Scott v. Sandford decision and the Fugitive Slave Act reinforced legal support for slavery.
Despite those legal obstacles, Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing slaves only in the Confederate states at war with the Union. Those in Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky, and Missouri remained enslaved because their states were not at war with the country.
As a skilled lawyer, Lincoln understood that his national security powers, implied within his role as commander in chief, superseded constitutional rights in times of war. He did not seek congressional approval, compensate slaveholders, or seek the approval of the courts. In essence, when we celebrate Juneteenth, we implicitly acknowledge broad presidential national security powers.
Historical precedent reinforces this principle. During the Whiskey Rebellion, President George Washington used force to suppress dissent without formal wartime authorization, arresting rebels without warrants. Congress authorized a militia for Washington but did not grant him wartime powers. In his efforts to quell the uprising, he ordered door-to-door searches and forcibly arrested suspected rebels without warrants, bringing several to the Capitol for trial.
The most compelling legal validation of these powers came in United States v. Felt. Mark Felt, the FBI associate director best known as Deep Throat in the Watergate scandal, was later prosecuted for authorizing warrantless searches to track terrorist groups like the Weather Underground and the Palestinian Liberation Organization following the 1972 Munich Olympics attacks.
At his trial, five former attorneys general, President Richard Nixon, and Felt himself testified that presidents and their agents are not always bound by the Bill of Rights when national security is at stake. Their argument underscored a long-standing reality: The executive branch has exercised extraordinary authority to protect the country in moments of national peril.
Felt’s controversial prosecution led to the passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978, which established that national security searches intended to prevent terrorist attacks need not adhere to standard constitutional rights. FISA effectively codified a national security exception to otherwise conflicting constitutional mandates.
Taken together, the Whiskey Rebellion, Juneteenth, FISA, and United States v. Felt demonstrate that national security concerns can, at times, take precedence over constitutional protections.
How does this apply to President Trump’s deportation policy? As commander in chief, he has determined that the Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gangs pose a national security threat. He classified these groups as terrorist organizations, recognizing that they entered the United States with organized criminal intent.
Most Americans would agree that, before a formal declaration of war against Germany, President Franklin D. Roosevelt could have ordered the assassination of Adolf Hitler. Similarly, few would argue against detaining Osama bin Laden or Khalid Sheikh Mohammed before 9/11. The United States need not wait for an atrocity to occur before acting decisively.
We elect the president to make tough national security decisions, not to be second-guessed by judges from another branch of government. The limits of this power remain open to debate, however. While courts may take a restrictive view, the subject is rarely taught in law schools or settled in case law.
Historical and legal precedent suggest that when national security is at stake, terrorists are not entitled to lawyers or pre-deportation hearings. As counterintuitive as it may seem, Juneteenth itself sets a precedent. Again, slaveholders were not granted due process hearings before the Emancipation Proclamation, nor did they receive Fifth Amendment compensation for the loss of enslaved labor.
When dealing with foreign criminal organizations, we should not analyze these disputes through the lens of antiseptic legal theory. National security demands a more hardheaded approach. As the saying goes, eternal vigilance is the price of liberty — swift deportations may be part of that price.
Donald trump, Abraham lincoln, National security, Juneteenth, Emancipation proclamation, Slavery, Due process, Mark felt, Deep throat, Whiskey rebellion, George washington, Foreign intelligence surveillance act, Tren de aragua, Korematsu v. united states, Ms-13, Mass deportations, Ice, Franklin delano roosevelt, Adolf hitler, Osama bin laden, 9/11, Khalid sheikh mohammed, Fifth amendment, Terrorism, Opinion & analysis
