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President Biden said Thursday that he has no choice but to build a new border wall because his hands are tied by congressional laws ordering billions of dollars to be spent on constructing the barrier.
Still, he said he doesn’t believe a wall works.
Speaking at the White House, Mr. Biden said he fought to erase the money from the budget but failed and had a deadline set in law.
“The money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t,” he said. “In the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that.”
Asked whether he thought the wall would be effective, he said, “No.”
On Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas declared an “immediate” need to build more border walls and roads. He issued an order waiving 26 laws to speed up construction.
The waivers cover iconic environmental and historic site protections such as the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Bald and Golden Eagle Protection Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
Mr. Mayorkas said his department will take “immediate action” to erect the wall.
It’s tough to square his urgency with Mr. Biden’s insistence that walls don’t work, said Chad Wolf, who was acting homeland security secretary at the end of the Trump administration.
If Mr. Biden didn’t want to build the wall, he could have allowed Mr. Mayorkas to announce construction but not waive the laws. Without the waivers, it could take years to complete the process of environmental impact assessments and consultation with local communities.
“If you go through the normal process, it takes three or four years to start construction, so they could just kick it down the road,” Mr. Wolf said.
SEE ALSO: Justice Department urges federal court to tear down Texas’ floating border wall
“But by waiving the environmental laws, that tells me that they’ve got a bigger problem at play here, that they don’t know what to do with it. They’re throwing everything at it,” he said. “They’re seeing crossings in that Rio Grande Valley area that they’ve never seen before, and they don’t have a solution.”
Mark Morgan, who was acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration, said Mr. Biden is trying to proclaim resistance to the wall while getting the benefits of its construction.
“They get to say, ‘Oh no, walls don’t work, but we have to build it.’ Meanwhile, they get to tell their Democratic colleagues, ‘Look what we’re doing,’” Mr. Morgan said.
In a statement Thursday, Mr. Mayorkas insisted that the wall building announcement wasn’t news, but he did not address his use of the waivers to hasten construction.
“From day one, this administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer,” he said. “That remains our position and our position has never wavered.”
He said the administration would rather spend money on “state-of the-art border surveillance technology and modernized ports of entry.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez New York Democrat, denounced Mr. Mayorkas’ “cruel” move, saying walls mean more migrant deaths because they push people into more remote areas.
“The Biden administration was not required to expand construction of the border wall — and they certainly were not required to waive several environmental laws to expedite the building,” she said. “The president needs to take responsibility for this decision and reverse course.”
Whatever the politics, Mr. Biden is caving on a 2020 campaign vow not to build “another foot” of the wall, which was Donald Trump’s marquee campaign promise and one of the most visible achievements of his presidential term.
Under the Trump administration, more than 450 miles of barrier were erected. Most of it replaced outdated or dilapidated sections of fencing built in the Clinton, Bush and Obama years.
Mr. Biden issued an order on his first day in office halting construction, forcing contractors to walk away from work in progress and leaving tons of wall-building equipment to sit and rust.
Yet he could not escape the fiscal 2019 appropriations law, which set aside $1.3 billion to build border walls and set a deadline for this year.
The Government Accountability Office, in a ruling early in the Biden administration, said the president could delay construction to study how best to comply with the law but could not refuse to spend the funding altogether.
Mr. Biden asked Congress to rescind the wall allocation, but lawmakers rejected his entreaties and the money and spending deadline remained on the books.
Environmental and immigrant rights groups said that doesn’t explain why Mr. Mayorkas is waiving laws to speed up construction.
“The Biden administration’s decision to rush into border wall construction marks a profound failure,” said Jonathan Blazer, director of border strategies at the American Civil Liberties Union.
The new sections of wall will be built in southern Texas, including through the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge. The refuge protects the endangered ocelot, the jaguarundi and other species.
“This is a horrific step backward for the borderlands,” said Laiken Jordahl at the Center for Biological Diversity.
The Department of Homeland Security said it will try to respect the environment even with the waivers in place.
To that end, the department will use a wall design that involves a movable jersey barrier.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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