Tucked inside the new Senate border deal is language allowing President Biden to postpone wall building and avoid erecting more barriers during this term.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in wall money that Congress approved in the Trump years are sitting unused. Under the law, Mr. Biden was supposed to use the money to build the wall over the next year or two.
The deal senators released Sunday pushed that spending deadline until late 2028, allowing Mr. Biden to avoid more construction in his current term.
“All this does is give the administration the ability to punt responsibility for border wall construction up to four years,” said Robert Law, director of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for Homeland Security and Immigration and a former senior official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.
The deal was negotiated by Sens. Christopher Murphy, Connecticut Democrat; Kyrsten Sinema, Arizona independent; and James Lankford, Oklahoma Republican.
“It builds border wall,” Mr. Lankford said on a call with reporters Sunday night.
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In a summary of the legislation released by his office, Mr. Lankford said the proposal “provides $650 million to build and reinforce miles and miles of new border wall. It also withholds a majority of the wall money to be used during the next administration.”
Critics said that was misleading.
“It is disingenuous of Sen. Lankford to imply that this bill contains new border wall funding when, in fact, all it does is move the existing balance forward so that [Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro] Mayorkas doesn’t have to build any more wall,” said Rosemary Jenks at the Immigration Accountability Project, which opposes the proposed deal.
The Times reached out to Mr. Lankford’s office several times for this report.
The wall was the most prominent of President Trump’s campaign promises and one of his more visible successes during his term in office.
More than 450 miles of barrier were constructed on his watch, much replacing less-effective fencing. He had plans to build nearly 300 more miles in a second term, but Mr. Biden’s election triumph dashed those hopes.
DOCUMENT: Border security deal summary
Mark Morgan, who led Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration, said the retreat on wall-building deadlines is emblematic of the general approach of the border deal, which he said is big on rhetorical heft but doesn’t deliver on actual enforcement.
“When [Sen. Lankford] says there’s money in there to build the wall, he’s misleading the American people. When he says it ends catch-and-release, he’s misleading the American people,” Mr. Morgan said. “It’s all a shell game, it’s all a lie.”
He pointed to language requiring sensitivity training for Border Patrol agents, which he said gives a mistaken impression that something is wrong with the workforce.
“It’s insulting,” he said.
On the wall, he said the bill gives Mr. Biden a pass on the Impoundment Control Act, which requires the president to spend money as Congress authorizes it.
“They’re saying, ‘Not only are we absolving you of the violation, we’re not requiring you to actually build the wall, we’re just kicking it down the line if some president in the future actually wants to secure the border,’” Mr. Morgan said.
Mr. Biden has been looking for ways to avoid building the wall since 2020. On the campaign trail, he promised that “not another foot” of wall would be built during his tenure.
Upon taking office in January 2021, he imposed an across-the-board construction halt. Contractors were ordered to put down tools and walk away from the project.
The result was uncompleted fencing that allowed illegal immigrants to pour through gaps. Roads and technology upgrades, part of Mr. Trump’s wall system, also were left unfinished.
The shutdown stranded hundreds of millions of dollars that Congress allocated in its spending bills for fiscal years 2019, 2020 and 2021, but which Mr. Biden didn’t want to spend.
Over the past three years, he has been in a tug of war with Congress, asking lawmakers to revoke the wall money and use it for other purposes. Congress refused.
Under the fiscal year 2019 spending bill, the administration had to spend the wall-building money by late last year. Mr. Mayorkas announced in October that he would comply with the law, effectively breaking Mr. Biden’s 2020 promise.
Mr. Mayorkas said the deadline in the law forced his hand, though his decision to waive iconic laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Endangered Species Act to speed construction left Biden allies steaming.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
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