U.S. President Donald Trump won two court victories today for his proposed U.S.-Mexico border wall. The main one was that the Supreme Court ruled, in a close, 5 to 4, decision, that $2.5 billion in military funds could be diverted to 100 miles of new construction of this wall. This court decision was split along the conservative-liberal divide, which Trump himself has affected. The president immediately tweeted, “Wow! Big VICTORY on the Wall. . . . Big WIN for Border Security and the Rule of Law.” Now maybe Anne Coulter, who has turned against the president lately due to this issue, will quit trashing Trump.
Actually, this decision for the first time legally permits the Trump Administration to begin new construction on this envisioned wall. Until now, almost all of the wall-fence construction has been repairing previous structures.
When Trump had campaigned for president in 2016, the main plank in his campaign platform was to build a wall to prevent immigrants from crossing into the U.S. illegally from our southern neighbor–Mexico. The border between the U.S. and Mexico is almost 2,000 miles. By then, there were an estimated 12 million illegal immigrants in the U.S. It had been an ongoing and growing problem for decades. The U.S. Congress had seemed inept to solve the problem with really effective legislation.
Even though I have been a harsh critic of Donald Trump as our U.S. president–having blogged about this perhaps 150 times since he campaigned for the presidency until now–I have not been opposed to the concept of building wall or fence a wall or fence on our southern border to try to help solve this problem of illegal immigration. Throughout all of my adult life, I have lived in two of the border states with Mexico–Texas and Arizona. So, I probably have more of a sensitivity to this issue than the average U.S. citizen has.
Back in February last year, President Trump had declared a national emergency regarding illegal immigration. He also called for $6.7 billion of military funds and other sources be earmarked for the construction of this wall. So, Trump didn’t get all of the $6.7 billion he asked for; but $2.5 billion will help. And since Trump has been president, he has whittled down his original call for a wall “from sea to sea,” referring to the entire border which stretches from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico. He now admits that it is impractical to have a wall or fence in some of the terrain on the U.S.-Mexico border. I think his latest statement has been about the wall or fence being about half the nearly 2,000 miles or a little less. And he now doesn’t restrict it to an actual wall; rather, they are constructing some portions with bollard fencing.
The other court decision involves Guatemala agreeing to serve as a gatekeeper for Latin Americans seeking asylum in the U.S. Trump had threatened U.S. sanctions against Guatemala since so many people trying to get into the U.S. illegally from South America have had to travel through Guatemala. So, Guatemala has agreed to provide asylum to people coming from Honduras and El Salvador in exchange for the U.S. implementing an agricultural guest-worker program for Guatemalans entering the U.S.
My main interest in Trump’s effort to build “the wall” regards Bible prophecy. I believe the Bible predicts that during the end times the world will be full of walls. I’m writing a series of books on biblical eschatology entitled Still Here. The first two books that are published are The Third Day Bible Code (2006) and Warrior from Heaven (2009). Book 3, which I expect to publish this year, has a chapter about walls and another chapter mostly about why these walls.
Moreover, I have written a series of eighteen posts on my blog entitled “Wall and Fences in the Twenty-First Century.” Perhaps the easiest way to get to them is to google this title, and they likely will show up as the first entries.
So, if Trump gets his wall, that plays into what I’m writing.
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