Wildlife groups sue over border wall funding

Suit challenges diversion of funds, waiver of requirements

Three wildlife advocacy groups filed suit Tuesday against the Trump administration over funding for the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico.

The groups — the Center for Biological Diversity, Defenders of Wildlife and the Animal Legal Defense Fund — are also challenging waivers from National Environmental Policy Act and Endangered Species Act applications, and other statutory regulations that have allowed the construction to go forward.

“This administration has an ongoing pattern of diverting funding that has not been appropriated by Congress, and waiving environmental and public health laws to fast track this project,” Jason Rylander, senior counsel for Defenders of Wildlife, told the Journal.

The groups are challenging the diversion of $7.2 billion from military projects in fiscal 2020 to be used for 31 projects consisting of the construction of 177 miles of border wall. The groups have already challenged the diversion of $6.7 billion in funding in fiscal year 2019. That challenge is making its way through the court, Rylander said.

“Other groups have also sued and have been granted injunctions,” Rylander said. “But the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed the project to continue.”

The suit maintains the diversion of funding and the waiving of requirements are unconstitutional.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and Lt. Gen. Todd Semonite of the Army Corps of Engineers — whose departments are involved with the construction — have been named as defendants in the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Rylander labeled the border wall a “pet project” of the administration. He said the project is crossing “some of the last wild places in America.”

“These desert habitats support various wildlife, some of which cross the border continuously,” he said. “This project hinders wildlife trying to reach rivers for water. It could impact the ability to recover such endangered species as the jaguar, the Mexican gray wolf and the ocelot.”

He also said the construction threatens cultural sites on Native American lands.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Army Corps of Engineers anticipate about 450 miles of new border wall to be complete or under construction by the end of 2020, including about 95 miles in New Mexico, according to CBP officials.

Esper has defended the use of funds meant for other defense projects, saying border barriers would reduce the need for military personnel to help CBP and Border Patrol agents, and said the wall would help slow the flow of illegal narcotics into the country.