President Donald Trump appealed a judge’s decision that blocked his administration from using $2.5 billion that was planned to be used for anti-drug activities to build a wall on the southern border.
On June 29, President Trump pledged to appeal the judge’s ruling, while reintroducing the plans for deportation raids a week from now.
“[W]e’re immediately appealing it, and we think we'll win the appeal,” Trump said during a press conference on Saturday at a summit of leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) major economies in Japan.
He said that the ruling was a disgrace.
“We will be removing large numbers of people … starting in a week after, you know, sometime after July 4th,” Trump said.
Trump has repeatedly stressed the necessity of the construction of a border wall as a solution to end the humanitarian crisis in the southern border that includes human trafficking, including minors, along with other problems, and most importantly, drug smuggling into the United States, which kills thousands of Americans every year.
However, he hasn’t been able to get congressional approval to proceed without hindrance.
In February, the Trump administration declared a national emergency to reprogram $6.7 billion in funds that Congress had allocated for other purposes to build the wall, which groups and states, including the most progressive state—California, had challenged.
On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Haywood Gilliam in Oakland, California, said in a pair of court decisions that the Trump administration’s proposal to transfer Defense Department funds intended for anti-drug activities was unlawful.
“These rulings critically stop President Trump’s illegal money grab to divert $2.5 billion of unauthorized funding for his pet project,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement late on Friday.
However, Democrats in Congress recently stopped saying that the conditions in the southern border are a manufactured crisis, after taking nearly two months to consider respective legislative action to address the issue.
ICE Raids Details Leaked
Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan leaked the timing and location of upcoming raids by immigration enforcement authorities in order to sabotage the operations, according to five unidentified current and former officials who spoke to The Washington Examiner.
President Donald Trump postponed the raids by two weeks on June 22, writing on Twitter that he did so at the request of the Democratic lawmakers, who asked for extra time to come up with a solution to the border crisis. All five officials told the Examiner that Trump called off the plan due to the leak.
