President Trump Signs Spending Package With New Money For Old Style Border Walls

March 23, 2018

President Donald Trump signed the bill but excoriated Congress for rushing the 2,232-page document to his desk.

"But I say to Congress, I’ll never sign a bill like this again. I’m not gonna do it again," he warned.

The spending package includes a little less than $1.6 billion for border security.

But that money isn’t going toward President Trump’s desired border wall systems now being tested in San Diego. Instead, the spending package insists that money only be spent on border wall designs that are already in use. 

"This is a down payment on a border wall system. This is a ten percent increase for immigration custom enforcement," said Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

The spending package singled out the bollard style walls currently situated along parts of the border like Nogales and under the spending bill’s terms, money from this omnibus can’t be used to build out the prototypes.

Specifically, the wording of the spending package states the the money "shall only be available for operationally effective designs deployed as of the date of the Consolidated 17 Appropriations Act, 2017, (Public Law 115–31), such as 18 currently deployed steel bollard designs, that prioritize 19 agent safety."

That spending package was signed in May 2017. The first prototypes were only approved for testing the following September and since they're still being tested, haven't been deployed.