Photo by: Joseph Yaroch
“I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster.” — President Donald Trump, February 15, 2019, declaring a national emergency at the border.
On February 15, 2019, President Trump declared a national emergency and announced that he would divert $6.7 billion from military construction, pay, pension and other accounts to build a border wall that Congress had denied. While declaring the emergency, the president publicly admitted that he “didn’t need to do this,” but he’d prefer to build the wall “much faster.” He added that he had declared a national emergency because he was “not happy” that Congress “skimped” on the wall by denying him the billions he had demanded.
The Constitution is clear that the president cannot spend taxpayer money without congressional authorization. And Congress was clear in denying funds for President Trump’s border wall. President Trump’s abuse of emergency powers threatens the Constitution’s clearly defined separation of powers, which the Supreme Court has recognized for centuries, and risks causing real and irreparable harm to border communities and the environment. It is also yet another example of the president’s repeated attempts to undermine the rule of law for an exclusionary agenda targeted at people of color.
The president cannot spend taxpayer money without congressional authorization. The U.S. Constitution assigns the power of the purse to Congress, not the president.
• Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution clearly states: “No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in Consequence of Appropriations made by Law.” This helps ensure that taxpayer funds are distributed for the common good, not for the individual favor of government agents.
• The Supreme Court has recognized the Constitution’s clearly defined separation of powers for centuries. In Youngstown Sheet & Tube Co. v. Sawyer, the Supreme Court ruled that a president may not disregard limitations that Congress has, in proper exercise of its own powers, placed on the president’s powers. In Hamdan v. Rumseld, the Supreme Court added that the president may not disregard such limitations even in times of war.
Congress was clear in denying the president’s request for border wall funds. Members of Congress, across party lines, reviewed and rejected the president’s request for $5.7 billion in border wall funds.
• Congress didn’t bow to Trump’s pressure even after he caused a 35-day government shutdown—the longest in US history—over his demand for billions of dollars for his wall.
• The Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2019, which passed through both chambers of Congress and which the president signed into law, declined to fund the president’s border wall. It also forbade construction in certain areas, including carve outs for wildlife areas, and imposed consultation and approval requirements before the start of construction in cities situated along the border.
• Bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate passed an unprecedented resolution to terminate the president’s emergency declaration.
The president’s border wall would cause real and irreparable harm to border communities and the environment. Border communities have repeatedly warned that walls are dangerous and wasteful. They divide neighborhoods, worsen dangerous flooding, destroy lands and wildlife, and waste resources. Plans for several wall projects using the illegal funds would cut through parks, wildlife corridors, and communities in Arizona, New Mexico, and California—iconic areas of the American Southwest that would suffer irreversible damage.
• Contrary to political rhetoric that mischaracterizes the border as a war zone, US border communities have lower crime rates than many cities in the interior of the country. A border wall would not make the US any safer.
• Barrier construction has disturbed or destroyed indigenous graves and cultural sites, particularly affecting the Tohono O’odham Nation. Numerous historical, cultural, and archaeological sites lie in the path of proposed walls
• If construction proceeds as the administration has announced, the remaining public lands and all remaining binational water bodies in Arizona would be walled off. In southwest Arizona, this includes the iconic Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, which houses both the International Biosphere Reserve and Quitobaquito Springs, a desert oasis that is home to plants and animals that occur nowhere else in the US.
• The wall could cut through the San Pedro River, which is the last remaining free-flowing river in the Southwest and which provides critical riparian habitat for thousands of birds, beavers, and other wildlife. In the southeast corner of Arizona, springs and marshy wetlands in the San Bernardino National Wildlife Refuge—an area that the proposed wall would cut through—provide habitat for rare native fish and support important grasslands. The barrier would prevent migration of species and cut water flow that’s needed to sustain these fish populations.
• In New Mexico, miles of the iconic Organ Mountains–Desert Peaks National Monument—home to important wildlife habitat and critical watershed protections—would be walled off and dangerously fragmented. New Mexican land that the president’s wall would bulldoze also provides critical habitat to the endangered gray wolf—a species that needs open migration routes to recover.