San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Use of military funds on border wall illegal, federal court declares
President Trump’s pledge to build a southern border wall suffered another defeat when a federal appellate court in San Francisco ruled Friday night that the president could not use his emergency powers to divert $ 3.6 billion in military construction funding to build the wall.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2to1 decision, upheld a December ruling in a case filed by the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition challenging the funding plan. California joined the case last October, along with 19 other states, seeking to halt the funding.
Chief Judge Sidney Thomas wrote in the court’s opinion that the court’s role was to decide whether construction of 11 pieces of the border wall appropriately used military construction funding.
“We concluded that it did not,” he said.
Judge Daniel Collins dissented, concluding that wall building funding was a lawful use of the funds.
The ruling was another blow to the Trump administration’s plan to build a wall along the U. S. border with Mexico in an attempt to stop illegal border crossings. The wall was a key part of the president’s 2016 campaign agenda, as well as a central part of his plan to stem illegal immigration. According to
U. S. Customs and Border Protection, 350 miles of the proposed wall have been constructed but almost all that replaced existing, dilapidated segments, according to reports.
Opponents of the president’s wall lauded the decision Saturday.
“This victory shows it doesn’t pay to circumvent the law,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. “Congress repeatedly refused to fund the President’s wall, and we fought back against his illegal money grab.”
The American Civil Liberties Union said the ruling should end the wall project.
“The courts have once again confirmed what everyone knows: Trump’s fake ‘ national emergency’ was just another pretext for targeting immigrants and border communities,” Dror Ladin, senior staff attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project, said in a statement. “It’s past time for Trump to finally give up on trying to raid the federal budget for his wasteful and illegal project.”
The Department of Justice did not return email and telephone requests for comment.
According to the court, the Trump administration requested $ 5.7 billion for the border wall in February 2019, but Congress allotted only $ 1.4 billion. The president invoked his powers under the National Emergencies Act and declared border control an emergency that required use of the military and construction of the wall.
Months later, Trump diverted $ 3.6 billion from 128 military construction projects to build 175 miles of the wall in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.