Pity the poor Treasury Forfeiture Fund, which has been shredded by congressional appropriators using it as a piggy bank for so long that the program’s managers have been crying uncle.

Now, along comes President Donald Trump with his creative use of statutory authorities to top up the nearly $1.4 billion Congress appropriated in fiscal 2019 for his southern border wall project, including an extra $601 million in Treasury asset seizure revenues.

Never mind that Homeland Security appropriators already in the fiscal 2019 law grabbed $200 million from the same pot of money to offset other priorities within the agency, including the wall. Treasury would have lost another $175 million in the Financial Services title of a measure proposed by House Democrats, though that rescission was dropped in the final omnibus bargaining.

Such is life for the obscure Treasury forfeiture account, which collects assets seized in criminal investigations by federal agencies, including DHS, auctions them for cash and shares the proceeds with federal, state and local law enforcement bureaus. Forfeiture funds are also spent on payments to crime victims, investigation and litigation expenses. Typically, the program has gotten by spending between $500 million and $600 million each year — despite profligate poaching of the fund by Congress.

Over the past decade, lawmakers have raided the Treasury account to the tune of $12.3 billion, for use mainly as offsets for other spending in Financial Services and Homeland Security bills, a Roll Call review found. That figure also includes $867 million tapped as a general offset for a two-year budget deal in 2013, which went toward raising discretionary spending caps.