The Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union is continuing to challenge President Donald Trump’s campaign promise to build a wall on the Southern U.S.-Mexico border to crack down on illegal immigration.
In December, Trump tweeted that he had issued a “115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas.” The Mass. ACLU issued a public records request to see the contract and was denied, according to ACLU Executive Director Carol Rose.
“The government responded and said we cannot locate any such contract,” Rose said in an interview with Boston Public Radio Tuesday. “The judge was angry and said, ‘We all know that just because our president has said that there's a contract that doesn't make it so.’ [He] effectively suggested that we all can understand that our president doesn't tell the truth. So that's remarkable.”
After Trump declared a national emergency to free up the funds to construct the border wall in February, the ACLU filed two lawsuits against his administration, partnering with environmental groups like The Sierra Club.
“We’re basically saying that trying to build this border wall is going to harm wildlands and habitats and take away people's property rights,” Rose said. “You'll see the people on the border aren't calling for this.”
Rose said the goal is to slow the process down, ultimately delaying it indefinitely.
“Hopefully the whole thing is going to be so bollixed up that nothing's actually going to happen,” she said. “I think there's enough groups between the states' attorneys general, groups like the ACLU and the Sierra Club and then Congress slowing it down. I think the president is wounding himself over and over again, punching himself in the face.”
