WASHINGTON: The US Supreme Court on Monday rebuffed a challenge by three conservation groups to the authority of President Donald Trump’s administration to build a wall along the US-Mexico border, a victory for Trump who has made the wall a centrepiece of his hardline immigration policies.
The justices declined to hear the groups’ appeal of a ruling by a federal judge in California rejecting their claims that the administration had pursued border wall projects without complying with applicable environmental laws. The groups are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund and Defenders of Wildlife.
Their lawsuits said construction operations would harm plants and rare wildlife habitats, and threaten coastal birds like the snowy plover and California gnatcatcher, and other species such as fairy shrimp and the Quino checkerspot butterfly.
Trump has clashed with US lawmakers, particularly Democrats, over his plans for an extensive and costly border wall that he has called necessary to combat illegal immigration and drug smuggling. Congress, controlled by the president’s fellow Republicans, has not yet provided him the amount of money he wants.
The president has threatened a government shutdown unless lawmakers provide $5 billion in funding.
On Saturday, Trump said congressional leaders sought a two-week extension of funding ahead of a December 7 deadline to fully fund the US government and that he would probably agree to it.
Mexico has rejected Trump’s demand that it pay for the wall.
Illegal immigration was a central theme of Trump’s presidential bid, and he repeatedly invoked the issue ahead of the November 6 congressional elections as a caravan of migrants from Central America made their way towards the United States. Trump deployed 5,800 US troops to the border.
The three conservation groups sued last year in San Diego after the Department of Homeland Security authorised projects to replace existing border fencing at two sites in southern California, as well as the construction of prototype border walls.
The dispute centres on a 1996 law aimed at countering illegal immigration that gave the federal government the authority to build border barriers and preempt legal requirements such as environmental rules. That law also limited the kinds of legal challenges that could be mounted. — AFP
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