The Trump administration is continuing to press on in their quest to get a southern border wall put up, and they’re continuing to face setbacks in court. This week, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam flatly denied their request to be allowed to proceed with wall construction while a court case challenging their usage of military funds proceeds.
Abruptly handing down his denial within a day of the request getting filed in the first place, Gilliam explained:
‘The Court does not find that Defendants are likely to prevail on the merits of their appeal.’
After a suit filed by American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of the plaintiffs, the Sierra Club and Southern Border Communities Coalition, the judge had previously issued a temporary injunction blocking the usage of those funds for some specific projects along the border, but the president’s team was seeking to get around that while their appeal before the Ninth Circuit Court moves forward.
They’d argued that adhering to Gilliam’s injunction would enact irreparable harm on both the United States and its people at large and the Justice Department, since they could lose the ability to use the already appropriated funds at all when this fiscal year draws to a close this fall. House Democrats have already included a prohibition of the re-appropriation of government funds for a border wall in their drawn up plans for defense spending for the next year.
As for the country at large, the Trump administration claimed:
‘Unless stayed, the court’s injunction will irreparably harm the Government (and the public) by prohibiting the Government from taking critical steps to stop the flow of illegal drugs from entering the country through the southern border.’
Some days it’s drugs; some days it’s asylum seekers. No matter what particular villain the Trump team picks for their latest escapades, the reality of the situation remains that rather than an overwhelming security crisis between already designated ports of entry (where a large portion of those drugs come in), there’s a humanitarian crisis. In the first months of this year, asylum seekers have spiked significantly to the point of the U.S. at times struggling to find appropriate accommodations.
Rather than adapting, President Donald Trump’s solution is to turn the asylum seekers around. He even told border patrol agents that they should break the law and do so during a recent trip to the area, leaving their superiors to come in and remind them that they were still bound by the law.
Trump and his associates are redirecting the military money in question under the provisions of a national emergency declaration that he signed earlier this year over the situation at the border. That declaration came after Congress refused to fund his wall project, and Gilliam noted in his first ruling in the case:
‘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 fundamental separation of powers principles dating back to the earliest days of our Republic.’
Featured Image via screenshot
