The ‘Right’ View by Francis P. Sempa

Securing the Homeland in Time of War

The United States is at war with Iran. During the four years of the Biden administration, millions of illegal aliens entered the United States, and some of them were Islamic terrorists who were brought into this country by an ISIS-affiliated human smuggling network, according to former FBI Director Christopher Wray. The Department of Homeland Security identified more than 400 migrants that entered the U.S. courtesy of an ISIS-affiliated network and the lax policies of the Biden administration. The Center for Immigration Studies notes that border counterterrorism programs collapsed during the Biden presidency. Four years of inexcusable neglect has resulted in allies of the enemy in our current war being inside the United States. We are at war and securing the homeland is a vital interest of the United States. Yet, Congress refuses to fund the Department of Homeland Security.

Historically, American presidents during time of war have done what they thought was necessary to protect the homeland, not bothering about Constitutional niceties. The Founders of our country understood this. Alexander Hamilton in “Federalist 23” wrote, “The circumstances which may affect the public safety are reducible within certain determinate limits…it must be admitted as a necessary consequence that there can be no limitation of that authority which is to provide for the defense and protection of the community in any matter essential to its efficacy.” In “Federalist 34,” Hamilton argued that the federal government should have “an indefinite power of providing for emergencies as they may arise.” In “Federalist 70,” Hamilton noted that “Energy in the executive [is] essential to the protection against foreign attacks,” and the president will need to exercise “decision…secrecy…[and] dispatch.”

In 1798, President John Adams signed into law the Alien and Sedition Acts to deal with the threat of French aliens in America during our undeclared war against France. The Adams administration compiled lists of aliens to be deported, many of whom fled on their own. Adams also issued a proclamation to put down a tax rebellion led by John Fries in 1799 by using military force to suppress those who obstructed the laws of the United States.

Abraham Lincoln, who is widely considered our greatest president, exercised broad, extra-constitutional powers during the Civil War. He unilaterally imposed a naval blockade of southern ports. He twice suspended the writ of habeas corpus, ignoring a federal judge’s ruling that Congress, not the president, had the constitutional power to suspend the writ. On Lincoln’s authority, Union military forces arrested Maryland state legislators so they could not vote for secession. In all, more than 13,000 persons were arrested by the Union military during the war.

President Theodore Roosevelt wrote that as president he “declined to adopt the view that what was imperatively necessary for the Nation could not be done by the President unless he could find some specific authorization to do it.” In World War I, President Woodrow Wilson’s administration charged more than 2,000 citizens under the Espionage Act for obstructing the recruitment or enlistment of troops. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes affirmed the president’s power to do this, explaining that, “When a nation is at war many things that might be said in time of peace are such a hindrance to its efforts that their utterance will not be endured so long as men fight.”

President Franklin Roosevelt effectively made the United States a belligerent in World War II six months before Pearl Harbor by ordering the U.S. Navy to switch from defensive to offensive operations in the Atlantic Ocean to help Great Britain. In early 1940, FDR authorized warrantless wiretaps on perceived domestic enemies, even though his attorney general advised that such action was prohibited by law. FDR said simply that wiretapping was necessary to protect the nation, and that it would be “too late to do anything about it after sabotage, assassinations and fifth column activities are completed.” After Pearl Harbor, at the insistence of west coast political leaders, including then-California Attorney General (and later liberal Supreme Court Chief Justice) Earl Warren, FDR issued the infamous Executive Order 9066, directing the forcible removal and incarceration of people of Japanese ancestry—more than 100,000 of them. FDR’s Attorney General Francis Biddle once explained that FDR was not much concerned about the legality of his actions because “what must be done to defend the country must be done.”

After the attacks of 9/11, President George W. Bush facilitated the passage of the Patriot Act and established military tribunals to deal with enemy combatants both here and abroad. Presidents Obama, Biden and Trump have used drones to kill suspected terrorists.

It is not clear how long the war against Iran will last. It is unconscionable that Congress refuses to fund the Department of Homeland Security in time of war. President Trump—if he follows the lead of many of his wartime predecessors—will do what he thinks is necessary to protect the homeland. One of our country’s most revered founders, Thomas Jefferson, wrote in 1810: “A strict observance of the written law is doubtless one of the highest virtues of a good citizen, but it is not the highest. The laws of necessity, of self-preservation, of saving our country when in danger, are of higher obligation.”

Francis P. Sempa is the author of the books “Geopolitics: From the Cold War to the 21st Century” and “America’s Global Role.” He is a contributing editor to “The American Spectator” and writes a regular column for “Real Clear Defense.”

THE VIEWS EXPRESSED BY CONTRIBUTORS ARE THEIR OWN AND NOT NECESSARILY THE VIEW OF ALLOTSEGO AND ITS AFFILIATES.