A federal appeals court on Wednesday refused to lift an injunction barring the Trump administration from using $2.5 billion intended for the fight against illegal narcotics to build a wall along the southern US border with Mexico.
CONGRESS DID NOT APPROVE MONEY
The ruling was another setback in President Donald Trump’s effort to construct a border wall, one of his top promises in the 2016 presidential campaign. He 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 US Circuit Court of Appeals said in a 2-1 ruling. “Congress presumably decided such construction at this time was not in the public interest. … It is not for us to reach a different conclusion” the panel said.
Trump has been unsuccessful in persuading Congress to fund the wall. In February, the president 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.