U.S. defense chief says he not decided on necessity of border wall
CGTN
["china"]
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan Saturday said he had not yet determined whether a border wall with Mexico was a military necessity or how much Pentagon money would be used.
President Donald Trump on Friday declared a national emergency in a bid to fund his promised wall at the U.S.-Mexico border without congressional approval. By declaring a national emergency, Trump can use certain Department of Defense funding to build the wall.
According to the law, the defense secretary has to decide whether the wall is militarily necessary before money from the military construction budget can be used.
Activist group Rise And Resist put out a call for a demonstration at the Trump Hotel in Columbus Circle, New York City, February 15, 2019. /VCG Photo

Activist group Rise And Resist put out a call for a demonstration at the Trump Hotel in Columbus Circle, New York City, February 15, 2019. /VCG Photo

"We always anticipated that this would create a lot of attention and since money potentially could be redirected, you can imagine the concern this generates," Shanahan told reporters traveling back with him from his trip to Afghanistan, the Middle East and Europe.
"Very deliberately, we have not made any decisions, we have identified the steps we would take to make those decisions." 
Shanahan said that military planners had done the initial analysis and he would start reviewing it on Sunday.
Officials have said that the administration had found nearly 7 billion U.S. dollars to reallocate to the wall, including about 3.6 billion U.S. dollars from the military construction budget and 2.5 billion U.S. dollars from a Defense Department drug interdiction fund.
A family of Central American migrants look through the US-Mexico border fence, as seen from Playas de Tijuana, in Baja California state, Mexico, January 16, 2019. /VCG Photo

A family of Central American migrants look through the US-Mexico border fence, as seen from Playas de Tijuana, in Baja California state, Mexico, January 16, 2019. /VCG Photo

A U.S. defense official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Shanahan would meet with the service secretaries in the coming days to pick which specific projects the money should come from.
Shanahan said that planners had identified the different sources of money that could be used, but he had not decided specifically what projects it would impact and ultimately it was his decision.
"All of this money has been assigned for other purposes, so it really then comes down to what are you going to trade off," he said. 
The Republican president's move, circumventing Congress, seeks to make good on a 2016 presidential campaign pledge to build a border wall that Trump insists is necessary to curtail illegal immigration.
(Cover: Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan gives a press conference following the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Defence Ministers' session, at NATO headquarters in Brussels, February 14, 2019. /VCG Photo)
Source(s): Reuters