Appeals court: Trump can’t start building wall
A federal appeals court refused Wednesday to allow President Trump to start building his wall at the Mexican border using money set aside for the military, saying funding has been denied by Congress, which has constitutional authority over federal spending.
The 21 ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco left intact a decision by U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam of Oakland barring the Trump administration from transferring $2.5 billion from Defense Department programs to build the first segments of the wall in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, and near El Centro in Imperial County.
“Congress denied this request,” the court said, and the administration’s attempt to redirect other federal funds “intrudes on Congress’ exclusive power of the purse.”
Trump, who had promised during his presidential campaign that Mexico would pay for the wall, sought $5.7 billion in funding from Congress last year. When lawmakers approved only $1.375 billion for limited barrier construction, the president vetoed an appropriations bill and closed down many government operations for 35 days, starting Dec.. 22 — the longest shutdown in U.S. history.
He then declared a national emergency over illegal immigration on Feb. 15 and said he would fund the wall with $8.1 billion already in the budget for other purposes, mostly military programs.
The administration cited the president’s broad emergency powers under federal law and argued that Congress, when it approved the Defense Department budget last year, had not expressly prohibited the use of those funds for wall construction. Justice Department lawyers asked the appeals court to suspend Gilliam’s ruling and allow construction to begin while they appeal his order.
Trump’s lengthy battle with Congress over wall funding in 2018 “makes it implausible that this need was unforeseen,” said Judges Richard Clifton and Michelle Friedland.
Clifton was appointed by President George W. Bush and Friedland by President Barack Obama. Dissenting Judge N. Randy Smith, a Bush appointee, said the administration’s argument that the wall is “needed to protect national security ... is not the sort of determination that courts will ordinarily secondguess.”
Smith said Trump was legally entitled to build the wall with funds from a Defense Department program to combat drug trafficking. Suspending Gilliam’s order and allowing construction to begin is consistent with the Defense Department’s determination that “drug trafficking along our Southern border ... threatens the safety and security of our nation,” Smith said.
The ruling came in a suit by the Sierra Club and the immigrant advocacy group Southern Border Communities Coalition. Their lawyer, Dror Ladin of the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “For the sake of our democracy and border communities, it’s time the president comes to terms with the fact that America rejected his xenophobic wall.”
Attorney General Xavier Becerra, who represented California in a separate lawsuit, said the ruling showed that Trump “can’t ignore our country’s constitutional and democratic principles just to protect his own vanity.”