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Published: Tuesday, 26 March 2019 07:53

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Photo: RHCWashington, March 26.- The US Department of Defense notified Congress that it authorized the transfer of one billion dollars to build new sections of the wall on the border with Mexico, today they disseminate local media.

According to the CNN, he had access to a notification of budget reprogramming sent last night by the Pentagon to the members of the Capitol, which indicates that this sum will be used to lift 57 miles of fences, make road improvements and adopt other measures.

The funds will be invested in 18-foot-high barriers along the border sections of Yuma, Arizona; and El Paso, Texas, according to a letter that the interim secretary of Defense, Patrick Shanahan, sent to the head of National Security, Kirstjen Nielsen, says Prensa Latina.

According to CNN, the Pentagon authorized the Army Corps of Engineers to begin planning and construction of the project on Monday night.

The US president, Donald Trump, seemed to confirm the fact in his account of the social network Twitter, in which he retweeted a message from his son Donald Trump Jr. with the text 'Christmas arrived early this week' and the news that the The Pentagon sent the aforementioned notice to Congress.

After not getting the members of the Capitol to approve the amount demanded by the president to build the controversial border work, last February Trump declared a national emergency to allocate military funds to lift the barrier.

Both the House of Representatives, with a Democratic majority, and the Senate controlled by the Republicans, voted against the emergency declared by the head of the White House, but the president vetoed the resolution in which Congress called him to end that measure.

Last night's announcement collected only the first billion dollars that the administration will have available for the wall, and the government said earlier that it plans to redirect an additional 1.5 billion at some point in the future, CNN said.

After receiving notification from the Pentagon, Senate Democrats immediately rejected the transfer of money and sent a letter to Shanahan in which they disagreed.

We strongly oppose the substance of the transfer of funds and its implementation by the Department without seeking the approval of the Congress defense committees, they said.

According to the letter, signed by senators such as Patrick Leahy, Dick Durbin, Brian Schatz and Patty Murray, the reprogramming of funds being carried out by the Pentagon without legislative approval constitutes a theft from other areas of the Armed Forces. (RHC)