A vendor pushes a cart with snacks and beach toys for sale on a beach near a section of the U.S. and Mexico border wall in Tijuana, Mexico, on Monday, Nov. 27, 2018. Two-way trade between Mexico and the U.S. totals about $1.3 billion per day, according to Mary E. Lovely, an economist at Syracuse University. After the U.S. shocked locals by closing San Ysidro for more than four hours on Sunday, the immediate concern is another limited shutdown that would hit commercial traffic between the two countries. Photographer: Luis Antonio Rojas/Bloomberg Judges overseeing litigation stemming from the government’s plan for a wall along the Mexico border were told on Tuesday that the Trump administration was authorizing 20 more miles (32 kilometers) of border barriers in Arizona and California after costs for earlier stretches were lower than expected.
The U.S. said that earlier this month the Department of Homeland Security amended a February request for financial assistance from the Pentagon to use the anticipated surplus on new projects. The money was initially transferred to the Defense Department’s drug interdiction activities, according to the filing.
“The amendment added mileage as well as new projects to the list of DHS-requested border-barrier-construction projects,” the government said in a court filing. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers “will not know the precise amount available until later in the fiscal year,“ it said.
The government said contracts will be awarded no later than Sept. 30 and construction won’t start until after Oct. 1.
The American Civil Liberties Union, involved in one of the suits over the wall, declined to comment. The Sierra Club didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.
A divided U.S. Supreme Court in July allowed the administration to start using disputed Pentagon funds to construct more than 100 miles of fencing along the border, letting the president take his biggest step yet toward erecting his long-promised wall.
The justices lifted a lower court freeze that was designed to block $2.5 billion in spending while lawsuits by the Sierra Club and another advocacy group went forward. Those cases are proceeding toward possible trials.
Trump declared the emergency after Congress approved only $1.4 billion of the $5.7 billion he sought for the wall this fiscal year. The House and Senate both voted to cancel Trump’s plan but weren’t able to override his veto.
The $2.5 billion is the first chunk of almost $7 billion in Pentagon and Treasury Department funds that the emergency declaration was designed to tap.
The case is Center for Biological Diversity v. Trump, 19-cv-408, U.S. District Court, District of Columbia (Washington).
(Updates to add ACLU and Sierra Club.)
To contact the reporter on this story:
Erik Larson in New York at elarson4@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story:
David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net
Joe Schneider, Steve Stroth