The Biden administration may be looking to complete the construction of former President Donald Trump’s southern border wall amid the ongoing migrant crisis, according to an exclusive report by Washington Times published on April 5. However, the White House has formally denied the claim.
The report is based on notes the Times viewed taken from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) session held with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, which revealed Customs and Border Protection (CBP) had submitted a plan to the DHS “for what it wants to see happen moving forward.”
Mayorkas told the session that although Joe Biden had made a point of halting funding to the construction of the wall as one of his first acts of office after the inauguration, his administration was left with room “to make decisions as the administration, as part of the administration, in particular areas of the wall that need renovation, particular projects that need to be finished.”
The Times said those areas Mayorkas referenced include “‘gaps,’ ‘gates,’ and areas ‘where the wall has been completed but the technology has not been implemented.’”
But on April 7, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaski denied there were plans to complete the wall. “We don’t believe the wall is an answer. We’ve never believed [that] the wall is an answer to addressing the challenges, the immigration challenges at the border,” she said.
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In a Presidential Proclamation halting funding to the Wall on Inauguration Day, Biden said, “building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution. It is a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”
Biden said he would install a “comprehensive and humane” immigration system in its place.
However, in late March, investigative journalist team Project Veritas published photos given to them by a whistleblower exposing conditions at the Donna, Texas soft-walled migrant camp. The whistleblower revealed a facility both packed and overflowing, as those seeking to enter the U.S. under President Biden’s immigration policy reforms were held in a series of plastic bubbles where they were made to sleep side-by-side on the floor in groups with tin foil blankets.
The whistleblower also said there had been several cases of violence and sexual assault at the facility, and that conditions had led to an outbreak of COVID-19.
An Inauguration Day article by Rio Grande Valley television station KRGV revealed CBP had signed an agreement with Donna to lease the land and began construction on the facility on Jan. 15, 5 days before Biden and Harris took their oaths of office.
Border wall or nuclear aircraft carrier?
Trump’s border wall project was one of the most opposed by Democrats and America’s left wing Big Tech and big media cartels. Trump left office with approximately 460 out of 567 miles of the wall complete after over a year of delays due to Democrat lawsuits.
In a January 2020 article critical of the wall, Democrat-friendly public broadcaster NPR criticized the total cost of the wall project as approximately $11 billion.
NPR compared the cost of Trump’s wall versus a pedestrian fence erected under the Bush administration, “On one side of a caliche road, you can see the pedestrian fence that was erected more than a decade ago. At 18 feet, it looks downright puny.”
“On the other side of the road are massive steel bollards topped with an ‘anti-climbing plate’ that rise 30 feet above the cotton fields, surrounded by men in hardhats and heavy equipment.”
NPR said the cost of Bush’s pedestrian fencing during his tenure, which ended in 2008, was approximately $3.9 million per mile. Trump’s steel wall project, which started in 2016, was approximately $19.4 million per mile.
Washington Times says CBP officials portray Trump’s wall as more than a mere steel barricade, however, describing it instead as, “a system, one that includes technology to allow agents to detect incursions and high-speed roads to allow them to reach trouble spots faster so that agents can interdict anyone who does make it over.”
NPR said the wall’s $11 billion price tag was the same as a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, of which the United States has 11.
Border wall pricing small compared to recent stimulus spending
The cost to complete the border wall seems tiny compared to what has been spent in the first 90 days of Joe Biden’s reign as U.S. President. The Democrat-majority House and Senate recently pushed through the $1.8 trillion American Rescue Plan, a spending bill promoted as a public stimulus to help with the economic and social fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic and measures governments at various levels across the country have implemented in response.
The bill was pushed through the Democrat-majority House and Senate by bypassing the 60 vote Senate Filibuster rule by calling the Plan part of the budget reconciliation process.
The lone Democrat to vote against the final passage of the bill in the House of Representatives, Jared Golden of Maine, confirmed the concerns echoed by Republicans and Libertarians throughout the bill’s legislative ascent, “In reviewing the bill in its full scope, less than 20 percent of the total spending addresses core COVID challenges that are immediately pressing: funding for vaccine distribution and testing, and emergency federal unemployment programs.”
The bill included a $350 billion bailout to state and municipal governments, $30 billion in funding to develop public transit in cities, and $200 million to build an underground train in Silicon Valley.
On March 31, Biden unveiled a second $2.25 trillion spending bill called the American Jobs Plan, coined as an infrastructure spending bill, which Biden says he will pay for with an additional bill, the Made in America Tax Plan, to raise corporate taxes.
However, only $650 billion in the Jobs Plan is earmarked for infrastructure. More than $400 billion will be helicoptered to “home and community based health” and $300 billion will subsidize affordable housing.
No less than the Washington Post called the American Jobs Plan “What it is, really, is the Green New Deal.”
Biden plans to unveil a third spending bill dubbed the American Families Plan in the coming weeks during comments given at the White House on March 31.
According to the U.S. Debt Clock, the national debt is now $28.143 trillion as of April 7, which works out to approximately $85,000 per citizen and $225,000 per taxpayer. The U.S. GDP is only $21.652 trillion.
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