The proposed barrier looks different from Trump’s construction.
President Joe Biden on Thursday said his administration had no choice but to build about 20 miles more southern border wall — after he’s long dismissed Donald Trump’s wall as a waste of money that doesn’t work to stop illegal immigration.
«Money was appropriated for the border wall,» Biden told reporters, referring to congressional action during the Trump administration. «I tried to get them to reappropriate — to redirect the money. They didn’t, they wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what is appropriated. I can’t stop that.»
White House press aecretary Karine Jean-Pierre could not point to instances when Biden attempted to change the funding designation. The White House also could not immediately explain why the project was moving forward now.
The Biden administration is waiving 26 federal laws to make way for unfinished border wall construction in South Texas, according to documents formally published in the federal register Thursday.
The waivers include ones for the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act allow for border barrier construction in select areas of Starr County, Texas.
In explaining the rationale for the move, made amid a migrant surge, GOP outrage and Democratic criticism, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said, «there is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers,» even as Biden repeated to ABC Senior White House Correspondent Selina Wang Thursday his argument that a wall isn’t effective.
