Border wall – Biden allows some construction

The Biden administration has just ordered the building of 20 miles of border wall in South Texas. This comes two years and nine months after he signed an order halting all wall construction. It also comes after information leaked out that he was selling unused wall segments to any and all comers.

Border wall resumes – maybe

According to The New York Post, President Biden has signed waivers of several environmental laws to permit the new construction. Crews will now build a length of border wall 20 miles long, in Starr County, Texas. Starr County is not the county that includes Eagle Pass, Texas, site of the riparian barrier controversy. But it does see more than its share of illegal immigrants crossing the Rio Grande (or Rio Bravo) into Texas. The Dallas Morning News gives further details: Biden waived 26 environmental laws to permit construction to go forward. Money for the project is already allocated; that happened in 2019.

On the day he took office, Biden signed an order halting border wall construction immediately. He literally ordered contractors to down tools and go home, leaving drive-through gaps they hadn’t yet closed. “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution,” he said then. Today the U.S. Customs and Border Protection bureau seemed to try to fudge that, again according to the Post. The fudge: Congress appropriated the funds, and the law says the government must spend them as Congress directed.

The new length of wall would add 20 miles where currently no barriers exist.

Only two months ago, Biden was selling off unused segments of wall to make restarting construction difficult for any successor.

He’s done this before

This isn’t the only policy reversal on the southern border by this administration. Biden had also ordered completion of a border wall project in San Diego, California. That new segment cut through Friendship Park, a place the late First Lady Patricia Nixon dedicated to U.S.-Mexican friendship. Marcos Cline, who had bought a massive segment of the original Berlin Wall, prevailed on the mayor of Tijuana, Mexico (across the border from San Diego) to set that segment up in Friendship Park, according to the Post. He did this as a direct rebuke not only of Biden but of any other American who wants a border wall.

The most likely reason for these policy reversals is that Democratic governors and mayors are complaining about the influx of migrants into their States and cities. Govs. Kathy Hochul (D-N.Y.) and J. B. Pritzker (D-Ill.) have both complained. Biden had hoped somehow to confine the entering migrants to Texas, but that plan seems to have proved untenable.