The White House plans to use $8 billion in previously-appropriated funding to build 234 more miles of barrier along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the national emergency order President Trump issued Friday, according to senior administration officials.
President Trump announced the plan Friday in the White House Rose Garden. Trump issued it alongside with signing a congressionally approved spending bill to keep open a slew of federal agencies, including $1.375 billion to go toward additional wall between the U.S. and Mexico.
Trump’s move faces near-certain legal action, including from immigrant groups and land conservation organizations. House Democrats say they’ll try to block the move in Congress and will sue if that doesn’t work.
Trump’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, told reporters Friday the executive branch is not touching Army Corps money for disaster relief projects in parts of the country that are still recovering from severe hurricanes and wildfires in 2017 and 2018.
In addition to the money Congress gave Trump through the spending measure, he is using $600 million from the Treasury Department’s drug forfeiture fund; $2.5 billion from the Defense Department’s drug interdiction program; and $3.5 billion from a military construction fund.
Mulvaney blamed Congress for failing to give Trump the $5.7 billion he requested in December, but said Trump’s emergency declaration is legal. Mulvaney added he does not think it will create a new precedent for future presidents to grab money by circumventing Congress.
Since 1976, presidents have cited their authority under the National Emergencies Act 58 times to approve and fund executive projects that were a matter of national security, an administration official said.
Administration officials could not list parts of the nearly 2,000-mile border where the steel, bollard wall is planned. One official said the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection will look at which Border Patrol sectors saw the highest levels of illegal entries and drug smuggling.
Most of the $8 billion will not be spent immediately and will go toward low priority military construction projects. That includes repairs to the barrier that can wait to be done for a few months, or even until 2020.
New or enhanced barriers would be put in at areas with the highest levels of illegal immigration, including the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, San Diego, Calif., El Centro, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz.
Last April, Customs and Border Protection said it was replacing and building new barriers on 100 miles of the border. Approximately one-third of the border has some type of barrier, including spots with only barbed wire.
