![\"\"](\"https:\/\/postalemployeenetwork.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/01\/President-Trump-254x300.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
WASHINGTON (Courthouse News ) \u2013 1\/25\/17 – \u00a0Directing the Department of Homeland Security to begin constructing a wall across the U.S.-Mexico border, President Donald Trump took executive action Wednesday to deliver on a promise from his primary campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cA nation without borders is not a nation,\u201d Trump said in a speech this afternoon at the Department of Homeland Security. \u201cBeginning today the United States gets back control of its borders, gets back its borders.\u201d<\/p>\n
Not willing to wait on Mexico paying for the wall, however, Trump also signed an order sending more money to Immigration and Customs Enforcement and directing federal agencies to look into how they can withhold federal funds from \u201csanctuary cities.\u201d Named for a refugee movement of the 1980s, sanctuary cities do not comply with the detainer requests used by federal immigration authorities to keep individuals in custody if they are suspected of violating immigration law.<\/p>\n
\u201cSanctuary jurisdictions across the United States willfully violate federal law in an attempt to shield aliens from removal from the United States,\u201d the executive order reads. \u201cThese jurisdictions have caused immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our republic.\u201d<\/p>\n
The order on the sanctuary jurisdictions directs the Department of Homeland Security to deport people who have been charged or convicted of crimes and are in the country illegally.<\/p>\n
Trump railed against sanctuary cities during the campaign and primaries, and the executive action he signed on Wednesday is a step toward ending them.\u00a0The order also directs more agencies to begin deporting anyone living in the United States illegally.<\/p>\n
The wall, and Mexico\u2019s funding of it, was perhaps the most consistent of Trump\u2019s policy proposals during his campaign for president.<\/p>\n
Audiences met the claim with thunderous cheers at rallies and campaign events, but Trump recast the promise in an interview Wednesday with ABC News.<\/p>\n
Noting that the payment could come in a \u201ccomplicated form,\u201d Trump now says U.S. taxpayers will be \u201creimbursed\u201d by Mexico.<\/p>\n
The executive orders Trump signed on Wednesday during a visit with Homeland Security are the ninth and 10th orders, or presidential memoranda, he has issued since taking office last week.<\/p>\n
Just how Trump will fund the massive project in the short term is unclear. Building a wall along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border will be costly. Trump himself has estimated the cost at between $8 billion and $12 billion. Other estimates put the cost at closer to $25 billion.<\/p>\n
Even the lowest estimate would consume roughly a third of the total Homeland Security budget, meaning Trump would likely need to get help from Congress to fund the project.<\/p>\n
The president can move already appropriated money around within departments without congressional approval, but this is typically done only with small amounts of money to cover ongoing projects and to cover basic expenses.<\/p>\n
Funding of the border wall would likely not come in this way, almost certainly setting up a budgetary showdown between the White House and Democrats, as well as any Republicans wary of handing out such an exorbitant amount of money when the current short-term funding package expires in April.<\/p>\n
U.S. churches kicked off the sanctuary movement in the 1980s, opening their doors to refugees from wars in Central America that killed half a million people, most of them civilians, in El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Honduras.<\/p>\n