President Biden famously promised not to build “another foot” of border wall during his presidency, but he’s willing to spend $950 million on upkeep of the existing infrastructure.
The Biden administration — which reversed course last month and announced it will build a new section of wall in Texas — allocated the money to repair and upgrade existing border walls in the Lone Star State, California and Arizona, according to a court filing.
Customs and Border Protection reported that four separate contracts have been awarded for “remediation work and system attribute installation” at sites in Tucson, San Diego, El Paso and El Centro.
The work will include the installation of cameras, new roads and “detection technology” that will make the barriers more effective in stemming the flow of illegal immigrants, documents state.
Remediation work will fill in border gaps, install gates, fix nearby patrol roads and address erosion and drainage issues in the immediate areas.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted this week 600,000 people illegally made their way into the United States without being apprehended by border agents between September 2022 and Oct. 1 of this year.
They join the 900,000 people from around the world who were legally admitted over the Southern Border to pursue immigration claims by CBP in the same period.
The monies for the wall repairs will be drawn from budgets for fiscal years 2020 and 2021 according to the papers which were filed as part of a court declaration signed by Paul Enriquez, an Infrastructure Portfolio Director at the US Border Patrol.
Anti-wall advocates howled last month after it was revealed the Biden administration allocated $229 million for the construction of 17 miles of new border wall in Starr County, Texas.
The Department of Homeland Security expedited that process by waiving local environmental and preservation laws that would have otherwise prolonged construction.
Administration officials defended the allocation, arguing that the money had already been earmarked for wall work in Congress and Biden had little choice in using it.
But environmentalists said the hurdling of the environmental roadblocks contradicted Biden’s anti-wall posture.
The administration awarded the Starr County project contract to Galveston-based SLSCO Ltd., a firm that built border walls under the Trump administration.
“Clearly DHS under the Biden administration has no more respect for border residents than it did under the Trump administration,” Scott Nicol, a longtime anti-wall activist and researcher and board member of the Valley-based Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, told the Texas Observer.
“Biden should use the remaining funds to mitigate some of the damage border walls have already done, not waste hundreds of millions of dollars to inflict more destruction.”
Local Starr County officials have questioned the placement of the new walls in their area, asserting that it’s sparsely populated and environmentally sensitive.
