Pentagon authorises $1 billion for Donald Trump's border wall along Mexico

The Pentagon has notified the us congress that it has authorised the transfer of $1 billion for Donald trump's border wall along Mexico. The funds have been diverted from the US army corpus  to build the 58 miles fence, the Daily Beast report said. “I have decided to undertake yuma sector projects 1 and 2 and El Paso sector project 1 by constructing 57 miles of 18-foot-high pedestrian fencing, constructing and improving roads, and installing lighting as described in your February 25, 2019 request,” acting defense secretary Patrick Shanahan said in a letter to homeland security secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

It is the same wall for which Trump had forced the federal government shutdown in January this year. On January 26, in a surprise move, trump had agreed to open the federal government without any fund for building the border wall. Trump’s sudden remark ended the longest shutdown in the us history. “I will sign a bill to open our government for three weeks until February 15th. I will make sure that all employees receive their back pay very quickly,” trump had said in a brief address outside the oval office. The white house took to Twitter to inform about the decision. “president trump supports reopening the government now that many democrats have finally agreed to negotiate on border security and barrier funding. While we hope that congress finds a solution in the next 3 weeks, the president will continue to keep all options on the table,” the white house said in a series of tweets.

The announcement came on the 36th day of the us shutdown. The state of the union address, which is scheduled for January 29 will see lots of fireworks. With house of representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi not relenting, the democrats and the republicans are appeared to be headed for a collision on SOTU. Throughout the shutdown, the democrats have repeatedly voted to reopen government so that federal workers can pay their bills.

Functioning of several key wings of the US government, including security and state departments, has been paralysed for nearly four weeks now because of the ongoing partial government shutdown.

President Trump had insisted that building a wall is the only solution to protect the nation from a large flow of illegal immigrants and drug smuggling.