Last Wednesday, Attorney General for California, Xavier Becerra, on behalf of the state, presented a lawsuit against President Donald Trump’s proposal to build his infamous wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Becerra who has condemned the construction of border wall projects in the San Diego metropolitan area as “medieval”, traveled to the Border Field State Park in the proximity of San Diego, to file the lawsuit in the federal court.
The California Coastal Commission will be included as a plaintiff on this lawsuit, for they are deeply concerned on the frightening effect the wall could have on tourism to the United States from Latin America, specially Mexico.
The Commission also stated that their mission is “to protect the State of California’s residents, natural resources, economic interests, procedural rights, and sovereignty from violations of the United States Constitution”.
Allegedly, the POTUS administration failed to comply with federal and state environmental laws, and that the federal government is violating the Constitution’s separation-of-powers doctrine, which means that the Executive Branch is vested with the power to waive state and local laws. Not to mention the federal government’s lack of a proper environmental analysis on the impact of a 2,000-mile-long wall.
The Department of Homeland Security is also under fire with this lawsuit, Becerra claims, that they decided to build the walls without the compliance of the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.
Last April, the Democratic Attorney General, went on ABC’s “This Week”, to harshly criticize Trump’s wall, constantly referring to the project as medieval.
“I’m still trying to figure out who believes that a medieval situation to fix our broken immigration system is what we need,” Becerra exclaimed. “I think American taxpayers probably are very much aligned with Mexico. None of them, whether it’s Mexico or our taxpayers, wants to pay for a medieval wall.”
Becerra who was appointed Attorney General last January, has previously sued Trump’s administration over a dozen times, including a lawsuit that challenges the POTUS’ decision to end DACA, this comes in addition to another lawsuit against the wall, presented by three different advocacy groups, The Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife and Animal Legal Defense Fund, who seek to prevent construction of wall prototypes in San Diego.
Nonetheless, if everything goes according to the current administration’s plan, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials have already announced, that the prototypes for a border wall may be completed by the end of October.