By Stacy M. Brown
NNPA Senior National
Correspondent
The Biden administration has bypassed 26 federal public health, environmental, and cultural preservation laws to fast-track border wall and road construction in Starr County, along the southern border of Texas. The decision marks a significant departure from President Biden’s earlier stance to halt border wall development in favor of comprehensive reforms.
During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump famously vowed to construct a wall along the southern U.S. border to curb unauthorized immigration, promising that Mexico would foot the bill. That never materialized.
While most perceived the Biden administration as more immigrant-friendly, the new border announcement has puzzled many. Trump’s recent admission that his insistence on Mexico financing the wall was merely rhetoric further confounded many opponents of such construction.
According to a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday, Oct. 5, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called it imperative, within the bounds of the law, to waive specific statutes, regulations, and legal requisites to ensure the swift construction of barriers and roads near the international land border in Starr County, Texas. Reportedly, in the 2023 fiscal year ending on Sept. 30, the U.S. Border Patrol in the Rio Grande Valley encountered over 245,000 migrants who had entered the country between ports of entry or unlawfully.
Argues Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies at the American Civil Liberties Union, “On the campaign trail, President Biden put it best when he said that the border wall is not a serious policy solution, and we couldn’t agree more,” Blazer continued. “Instead of upholding this promise, the Biden administration is doubling down on the failed policies of the past that have proven wasteful and ineffective.”
Construction of a border wall will result in the deaths of at-risk animals, explained Defenders of Wildlife, an organization dedicated to the protection of native animals and plants.
They point out that jaguar, Mexican gray wolf, Peninsular bighorn sheep, some pygmy-owls, among other species found nowhere else in the U.S., will be at risk as a result of the wall. Cut off from their major water source, The Rio Grande River, and blocked from migrating, these species will face serious consequences if their habitat is interrupted, added Laiken Jordahl of the Center of Biological Diversity. Their survival depends on connected habitat extending southward into Mexico.
After feeling the strain of receiving thousands of immigrants bused to cities across the country, a number of democratic mayors have put pressure on the President to reduce the pace of immigrant arrivals, Washington Post reporter Nick Miroff said in a PBS News Hour interview. The President has now spoken of the border wall as an urgent necessity, he said.
“This politically motivated action will only harm border communities,” explained Blazer. “It’s time for the Biden administration to choose humanity and real solutions over politics.”
