Donald Trump’s government is looking for ways out in order to avoid the court order that blocked the construction of two sections of the border fence in Arizona and Texas and announced today a court appeal.
The lawyers representing the State are trying to settle in another instance, the California court order in order to obtain an injunction allowing the Trump administration to continue with the construction of the two segments of the Mexican border wall until the judicial authorities issue a final judgment on the case.
The appeal was presented Monday night as a way to look for a way to continue the construction of the two sections of the wall in Arizona and Texas, respectively, avoiding Judge Haywood Gilliam´s decision of the courts of Oakland (California), who ordered to block the project on May 24.
Magistrate Haywood Gilliam agreed to a coalition of 20 states, most governed by Democrats, an environmental organization and a civil rights organization, which had sued the federal government.
According to a comment transcribed by the Politico newspaper, the Justice Department said that the mandate threatens to deprive (the Department of Defense) of its authorization to use its funds destined to finalize the projects at the ports of entry of El Paso and Yuma, since it will surely expire during this appeal process.
In the long historical line of the “wall”, it stands out an item of $1,3 billion for the renovation of the existing wall, approved in February by the Congress, a number that was far from the $5,7 billion that Trump had requested. This made the president to declare a national emergency at the Southern border in order to obtain these funds without the need of the legislature authorization.
With the national emergency, the Government reallocated to the wall some $6,7 billion, previously approved by the Pentagon and the Department of the Treasury , which added to the $1,3 billion that the Congress destined to that project, should serve for the construction of some 376 kilometers of wall and allow the President to begin to fulfill his main campaign promise.
The building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border was one of Trump’s main campaign promises in the 2016 elections and one of the measures that most opposition and media attention has raised both in the U.S. and the rest of the world.
Translated by: José Espinoza