Immigration Activists To Trump: No National Emergency Here

SAN DIEGO, CA – A San Diego-based group of immigration activists and advocates pushed back Friday against President Donald Trump's national emergency declaration to build a wall along the U.S-Mexico border.

The Southern Border Communities Coalition is composed of 60 organizations based in border cities from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas, which lies adjacent to the Gulf of Mexico at the southern tip of the state. The coalition is currently run in-part by Alliance San Diego Policy and Communications Strategist Vicki Gaubeca and Executive Director Andrea Guerrero.

"Let me be clear: there is no national emergency here," said Gaubeca, the executive director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition. "Congress must act quickly to put a stop to this presidential abuse of power. ... Walls and hyper-militarization don't make us safer, but do hurt the 15 million people who call the southern border region home, endanger wildlife and the environment, and are a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars."

Trump announced his plan to declare the emergency Friday in the White House Rose Garden. The move comes after roughly two months of haggling with Congress to allocate federal dollars to fund improvements to existing barriers at the border and to begin building the president's signature concrete border wall.

"I could do the wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this," Trump said. of an emergency at the border. "But I'd rather do it much faster."

In addition to signing the declaration, Trump also signed a spending bill including $1.375 billion for fencing improvements but expressly forbidding using the money for the wall as the White House commonly describes it. The national emergency declaration gives Trump the ability to shuffle roughly $3.6 billion in military funding for other projects toward border barrier construction projects, according to a report by the New York Times.

Trump will also have access to $2.6 billion from federal counter- narcotics programs and $600 million from the U.S. Treasury Department. The pool of funding would give Trump access to approximately $8 billion for border barrier improvements and construction, the New York Times said.

"It has never been clearer than today, that Congress must stand firm against Trump's dangerous power grab," said Johana Bencomo, the coalition's co- chair. "The border region is not a war zone where military-style enforcement takes precedence over the rights enshrined in the Constitution."

It remains to be seen if local organizations or jurisdictions plan to take the Trump administration to court over the declaration. The American Civil Liberties Union as well as Gov. Gavin Newsom announced their intent to sue shortly after the Rose Garden speech.

RELATED:

• Court Upholds Overriding Environmental Laws For Border Wall
• Gov. Newsom To Withdraw Majority Of National Guard From Border
• Expedited Replacement Of Border Fencing Ordered In San Diego Co.
• SD Joins Lawsuit Over Sewage Flow Into Tijuana River
• Homeland Security Secretary Tours San Ysidro Port Of Entry
• SD County OKs Temp Housing For Migrants As 'Right Thing To Do'
• Border Agent Assault Lands Man Behind Bars For 30 Months

--City News Service/Shutterstock image