Military Funding for Border Barriers: Catalogue of Interagency Decisionmaking

Summary

The Department of Defense (DOD, or the Department) has contributed $6.1 billion to the construction of new and replacement barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border in support of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) by invoking a mixture of statutory and nonstatutory authorities. Congressional concerns surrounding the use of these authorities and the further possibility that DOD’s actions may jeopardize legislative control of appropriations has generated interest about the decisionmaking process that drove the Department’s funding decisions.

DOD has not generally made internal and interagency communications related to these processes directly available to congressional staff. However, various letters, memoranda, and explanatory declarations from key decisionmakers have been released into the public record (primarily as the result of ongoing litigation) that provide a more complete picture of the issues the Department considered, along with its final determinations on border barrier funding.

This report provides a chronological summary of internal and interagency communications related to DOD’s border wall funding processes since approximately April 2018 as described chiefly through court exhibits and declarations in legal proceedings. Due to the technical difficulty of accessing legal records, CRS has made all relevant open source materials accessible to congressional staff via hyperlinks. A comprehensive set of legal citations has also been provided in the accompanying tables.