Trump blocked by judge from building sections of border wall

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge has blocked U.S. President Donald Trump from building key sections of his border wall with money secured under his declaration of a national emergency, delivering what may prove a temporary setback on one of his highest priorities.

U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam Jr.’s order, issued Friday, prevents work from beginning on two of the highest-priority, Pentagon-funded wall projects — one spanning 74 kilometres in New Mexico and another covering eight kilometres in Yuma, Ariz.

On Saturday, Trump — who wants to prevent unprecedented numbers of Central American migrants from crossing into the U.S. along the southern border — pledged to file an expedited appeal of the ruling.

Trump, who is visiting Japan, tweeted: “Another activist Obama appointed judge has just ruled against us on a section of the Southern Wall that is already under construction. This is a ruling against Border Security and in favour of crime, drugs and human trafficking.”

While Gilliam’s order applied only to those first-in-line projects, the judge made clear that he felt the challengers were likely to prevail at trial on their argument that the president was wrongly ignoring Congress’s wishes by diverting Defence Department money.

“Congress’s ‘absolute’ control over federal expenditures — even when that control may frustrate the desires of the Executive Branch regarding initiatives it views as important — is not a bug in our constitutional system. It is a feature of that system, and an essential one,” he wrote.

It wasn’t a total defeat for the administration. Gilliam rejected a request by California and 19 other states to prevent the diversion of hundreds of millions of dollars in Treasury asset forfeiture funds to wall construction.

The delay may be temporary. The question for Gilliam was whether to allow construction with Defence and Treasury funds while the lawsuits brought by the American Civil Liberties Union and the state attorneys general were being considered. The cases still must be heard on their merits.

“This order is a win for our system of checks and balances, the rule of law and border communities,” said Dror Ladin, a lawyer for the ACLU, which represented two groups.

DANIEL OCHOA DE OLZA ASSOCIATED PRESS FILE PHOTO A migrant passes a child to her father after he jumped the border wall to get into the U.S. near San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico, in January. Unprecedented numbers of Central American migrants are crossing into the U.S.