A federal court approves the use of $ 3.6 billion in military funds for the Trump wall

A federal court of appeals has allowed the Administration to use $ 3.6 billion of funds destined to the Department of Defense for the construction of the wall on the border with Mexico, after a smaller court prevented using those resources last month.

The decision of the Fifth Court of Appeals, which occurred on Wednesday, grants an important victory for President Donald Trump, who has campaigned with the promise of erecting a wall or fences in vast areas along the border.

In any case, it is a different decision from that of the Supreme Court, which allowed us to use 2.5 billion dollars from the Department of Defense for another section of the wall.

Trump plans to use these funds to build 11 sections of border fences covering 450 miles.

The president decreed on February 15 a state of national emergency due to the alleged crisis caused by undocumented immigrants at the border, which would allow him to derive additional funds to build a wall. " It's a great thing because we have a drug invasion, a gang invasion, an invasion of people," Trump said then.

The Border Network for Human Rights organization and El Paso County, Texas, filed the lawsuit on September 20. And in October, district judge David Briones granted them a temporary ruling to stop the construction of the wall while evaluating the case.

Briones said the emergency declaration had been illegal and gave the plaintiffs a permanent mandate to prevent the construction of the wall.

Paradoxically, the president said that the wall would fight illegal drug trafficking, which he estimated caused about 70,000 deaths a year in the country; however, it ended up diverting anti-narcotics funds, The Washington Post reported.

The decision can still be appealed by the plaintiffs.

The Trump administration set a goal to lift up to 500 miles of new barrier before the 2020 elections. The promise of building a wall has been one of the most common among those made by the president in the campaign.

To date, the Government has largely replaced some existing barrier segments (there are about 700 miles along the entire southern border) with a more modern infrastructure, and began building some new points. In total, the border between the United States and Mexico is almost 2,000 miles long.

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They captured several people crossing the border between Mexico and the United States over the wall