La Prensa San Diego Staff
The new Republican Congress, fresh off their election high, this week introduced a plan to build their wall between the US and Mexico using a 2006 law passed by President George W. Bush, but they are lacking one thing: money.
After a year of Donald Trump promising to “Build that wall!”
and make Mexico foot the bill, now Congressional Republicans are seeking billions of dollars from US taxpayers to fund an expansion of the barrier along the Mexican border.
Knowing Democrats will object, the Republicans are planning to include the funding in a budget bill that must be passed by the end of April, or the federal government will shut down.
The 2006 law, HR 6061, known as the Secure Fence Act of 2006, authorized the construction of more than 700 miles of “physical barrier” along the border. The law was never fully implemented or funded, but it also didn’t have an expiration date.
Soon-to-be President Trump could use that exisitng law and new funding, if approved, to build more fences, triple fences, access roads, and other border security measures to fulfill his campaign promise. Although not literally a wall, the end result in his mind would be achieved.
Not a “huuuge” wall, or a “beautiful wall”, as Trump promised, but a wall none the less.
And to get it done, Trump is abandoning his promise to make Mexico pay for the wall, a common promise during his campaign.
The hard part for Democrats will be objecting to continuing the deployment of a physical barrier that many leading Democrats voted for at the time, including then-Senator Hillary Clinton, as well as the newly appointed Senate Minority Leader, Chuck Shumer from New York.
The current barrier along the southern border is a combination of fences, walls, metal plates, and virtual fences consisting of cameras and sensors in remote areas. Overall, the total protected areas currently span a distance of more than 580 miles of the nearly 2,000-mile border from California to Texas.
But, besides the political fight, a larger fight over the environmental impacts of an expanded border fence could further enflame both sides.
A separate law passed in 2005, known as the Real ID Act, allows the Secretary of Homeland Security to waive any and all laws, regulations, or permits that would otherwise interfere with the “expeditious construction of the barriers and roads” along the border.
This simple sentence means that that Trump’s Administration could waive the Endangered Species Act, the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, the Coastal Zone Management Act, the Clean Water Act, the Clean Air Act, and the National Historic Preservation Act with the stroke of a pen.
And that authority to ignore all of these environmental protections is not subject to judicial review by any court action. In fact, in December 2005, a federal judge dismissed legal challenges by the Sierra Club, the Audubon Society, and others to a decision by the then-Secretary of Homeland Security.
In June 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal of a lower court ruling upholding the waiver authority in a case filed by the Sierra Club, leaving the waiver in place.
And in September 2008, a federal district court judge in El Paso dismissed a similar lawsuit brought by El Paso County, Texas.
The proposed expanded fence could disrupt wildlife migration patterns, divide several Native American reservations, and impact fragile ecosystems along the border without any process for mitigation, appeal, or injunctions.
Trump’s audacious pledge during the campaign to build a wall seemed inflammatory, outrageous, and even far-fetched. Now, given existing laws already in place, Trump’s threat now seems more likely than anyone ever thought possible.
The only fight left is whether Democrats will mount a defense to the fence, and hold up funding for what immigration experts say is an unnecessary barrier that will cause more environmental harm than its immigration impact.
At a time when undocumented immigration is at a 20-year low, and more than 1.2 million Mexican immigrants returned to their homeland on their own between 2007 and 2014, spending an estimated $10 billion to build a wall seems foolish.
Trump may have dumped his pledge to stick Mexico with the bill, but that won’t deter him.
Needed or not, it seems at least one of Donald Trump’s outrageous promises may come to fruition.