This archive report was first published on 4 July 2019.
On July 3, 2019, a federal appeals court dealt a significant blow to President Donald Trump's efforts to construct a border wall along the southern U.S. border with Mexico. The court refused to lift an injunction barring the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion intended for the fight against illegal narcotics to build the wall.
The ruling was the latest in a series of setbacks for President Trump's efforts to construct the border wall, one of his top promises in the 2016 presidential campaign. He had pledged at the time that Mexico would pay for it.
“Congress did not appropriate money to build the border barriers defendants seek to build here,” a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling.
President Trump has been unsuccessful in persuading Congress to fund the wall. In February, he declared a national emergency, saying that would entitle the administration to reprogram $6.7 billion in funds Congress had allocated for other purposes to build the wall.
Several states, including California, and organizations, including the Sierra Club and the Southern Border Communities Coalition, challenged the administration decision in two lawsuits.
A U.S. District Court judge in California had previously ruled that the Trump administration’s proposal to build the border wall with money appropriated for the Defense Department to use in the fight against illegal drugs was unlawful. The judge issued an injunction barring use of the funds for a border wall.
