Donald Trump’s plan to use money from the Department of Defense to start construction on his border wall has hit a major snag after being hit with a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge on Friday.
California U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam issued the order that limited additional border fencing to specific areas and blocked the transfer of $1 billion from the Pentagon to pay for its construction, The Hill reported. The injunction did not bring a stop to construction altogether, the report noted.
The injunction came after Donald Trump’s controversial and contested decision to declare a state of emergency in order to reallocate funding for the wall. Trump had been demanding that Congress allocate more than $1 billion to start the construction of the wall, but Democrats refused, reminding Trump that he had repeatedly promised that Mexico would pay for the wall. Trump ultimately triggered a government shutdown that became the longest in U.S. history before relenting and re-opening the government weeks later.
Before a second government shutdown could go into effect, Trump declared the state of emergency that allowed him to go around Congress in seeking funding for the border wall.
In his ruling, Gilliam cited the separation of powers between the executive branch and Congress, saying that Trump was acting beyond his power to obtain the funding despite the denial from Congress.
“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,” he wrote.
On last legal setback in a week of legal setbacks for Trump. https://t.co/mk2cWHjvkm
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) May 25, 2019
The lawsuit that led to Friday’s ruling also argued that Donald Trump’s plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border would have harmful effects on the environment there.
The American Civil Liberties Union, one of the entities that sued Trump over his emergency declaration, praised the ruling on Friday.
“This order is a win for our system of checks and balances, the rule of law, and border communities. 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,” Dror Ladin, an ACLU staff attorney, said in a statement, via CNN .
Donald Trump had not yet responded to the ruling, but he has vowed to push forward with the construction of the border wall.
