Pieces of Trump's Wall Face Another Round of Legal Challenges

(Bloomberg) -- President Donald Trump’s Mexico border wall is being litigated to pieces: The California judge who already halted funds from being diverted from the federal budget for some construction projects is now being asked to block others.

The targets of the latest challenge are sections of the wall proposed for El Centro, California, and Tucson, Arizona. U.S. District Judge Haywood Gilliam is scheduled to hold a hearing in Oakland, California, on June 5.

The American Civil Liberties Union and a coalition of 20 states said their objections to the new projects are “virtually identical” to the arguments that persuaded Gilliam to prohibit Trump from using $1 billion in taxpayer funds to break ground on the wall in El Paso, Texas, and Yuma, Arizona. The ACLU contends that Trump’s plan to spend another $1.5 billion for the El Centro and Tucson sites circumvents Congressional authority to allocate federal funds.

The Trump administration quickly filed notice that it will appeal Gilliam’s May 24 ruling after the president tweeted that the decision is “a ruling against Border Security” by “another activist Obama appointed judge.”

Gilliam on Thursday rejected the administration’s request to put his decision on hold while the appeal is pending.

“The court does not find that defendants are likely to prevail on the merits of their appeal,” he wrote in an order. “In granting the preliminary injunction, the court rejected all of the arguments defendants now advance regarding their intended use of funds.”

The cases are Sierra Club v. Trump, 19-cv-00892, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California; California v. Trump, 19-cv-00972, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (Oakland).

To contact the reporter on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in San Francisco at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: David Glovin at dglovin@bloomberg.net, Peter Blumberg

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