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The National Emergency Concerning the Southern Border of the United States (Proclamation 9844) was declared on February 15, 2019, by United States President Donald Trump. Citing the National Emergencies Act, it ordered the diversion of billions of dollars of funds that had been appropriated to the U.S. Department of Defense for military construction.[1][2] Trump declared the emergency after he signed, but derided, a bipartisan funding bill (passed by the House and the Senate a day before) containing border security funding without funding for the border wall that Trump demanded.[2][3]
Trump had previously threatened to declare a national emergency if Congress did not pass his entire desired program for a wall on the United States–Mexican border by February 15, 2019.[4] Under Proclamation 9844, the Trump administration intended to redirect $8 billion in previously-agreed expenditure and to use the money to build the wall instead.[5][6][7] Under Trump's plan, $3.6 billion assigned to military construction, $2.5 billion meant for the Department of Defense's drug interdiction activities, and $600 million from the Treasury's forfeiture fund would be diverted for wall construction.[5][6][7] Trump's declaration was unprecedented in that none of the 58 previous emergency declarations made by U.S. presidents involved circumventing Congress to spend money it had expressly refused to authorize or allocate.[8][9]
Trump's declaration of a national emergency was condemned by Democrats as unconstitutional; U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called the declaration an affront to the rule of law that was "a lawless act, a gross abuse of the power of the presidency and a desperate attempt to distract from the fact that President Trump broke his core promise to have Mexico pay for his wall."[10] Some Republicans also criticized Trump's declaration, fearing that circumventing Congress would set a dangerous precedent for the future.[10] Congress passed a joint resolution to terminate the national emergency, but it was vetoed by Trump; this was his first veto.[11]
Trump's declaration of a national emergency was immediately challenged in federal court, with California and sixteen other states suing the federal government on separation of powers grounds.[12]
The Sierra Club and ACLU brought a similar suit.[13] In 2019, a U.S. district court issued a preliminary injunction, and later a permanent injunction, in the Sierra Club suit, blocking Trump from diverting military funds for construction of a border wall.[14] In July 2019, the Supreme Court, in a 5–4, one-paragraph ruling, overturned the lower court's ruling in Trump v. Sierra Club that blocked the use of funds to construct the border wall pending further legal proceedings; the Supreme Court majority found that the Sierra Club likely lacked legal standing.[15][16]
In October 2019, in a separate case, a U.S. district court in Texas found that the El Paso County, Texas and the Border Network for Human Rights had legal standing to challenge Trump's attempt to divert $3.6 billion in military construction for wall construction along the Mexico border, and in December 2019, the court issued a permanent injunction blocking the attempted diversion of funds.[17] The injunction was overturned in January 2020.
In a proclamation made on February 13, 2020, Trump extended Proclamation 9844 for an additional year; he repeated the one-year extension on January 15, 2021, just days before leaving office.[18][19] However, Trump's successor, President Joe Biden, in one of his first official acts as president on January 20, 2021, terminated Trump's emergency declaration and paused work on the wall.[19][20] On February 11, 2021, Biden wrote in a letter to Congress that the original declaration of national emergency had been "unwarranted" and that no more government funds would be used to build the wall.[21]
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