The White House informed Congress Thursday it will siphon another $3.8 billion away from the Pentagon to build President Trump’s border wall, sparking a new wave of anger on Capitol Hill where lawmakers said he’s trampling on their powers and shortchanging the troops.
With the move, Mr. Trump has now funneled nearly $10 billion from Pentagon accounts toward his wall over the last two years, spurring a feverish pace of construction as he races a self-imposed election deadline of having more than 400 miles built.
The Pentagon said Homeland Security requested the help last month, saying more money will build an additional 177 miles of steel bollard fencing at the U.S.-Mexico boundary. Defense officials said they concluded the wall was a high enough priority to shift the money over.
“All of these areas along the Mexican-US border are home to some of the strongest and most violent drug cartels in the world,” said Bob Salesses, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense Integration and Defense Support of Civil Authorities.
The American Civil Liberties Union vowed an immediate lawsuit to try to stop the new cash grab, even as other cases are still raging from last year’s similar diversion of funds.
The new request takes $1.3 billion from National Guard funds and the rest from defense-wide procurement. The money is shifted into a Pentagon account for drug interdiction, where it will be used to build border wall under a provision of the law that allows barriers to be built in drug corridors.
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