A federal judge in the United States on Friday, momentarily barred the Trump administration’s plan to use billions to put up a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border with Defense Department funds.
United States District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam’s ruling temporarily stops the administration from using the reallocated funds for projects in specific areas in Texas and Arizona.
Donald Trump declared a national emergency in February to redirect funding from the Department of Defense to begin construction of his long-promised border wall.
“In short, the position that when Congress declines the Executive’s request to appropriate funds, the Executive nonetheless may simply find a way to spend those funds “without Congress” does not square with very basic separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic,” wrote Gilliam, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama.
The latest move was a workaround Congress, which had not given in to his requests to fund the barrier. The wall has been Trump’s signature promise.
Gilliam’s ruling doesn’t prevent the Donald Trump administration from spending money gotten from other sources to fund the wall.
He said that Donald Trump’s plan to divert Pentagon funds for border-wall construction was unconstitutional because the argument White House relied on applied to unforeseen needs, Politico reported.
“Defendants’ argument that the need for the requested border barrier construction funding was ‘unforeseen’ cannot logically be squared with the Administration’s multiple requests for funding for exactly that purpose dating back to at least early 2018,” the Obama nominee wrote.
“This order is a win for our system of checks and balances, the rule of law, and border communities,” Dror Ladin, an attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, said in a statement.
“The court blocked all the wall projects currently slated for immediate construction. If the administration begins illegally diverting additional military funds, we’ll be back in court to block that as well.”