“The United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats,” President Joe Biden said in a proclamation the day he was inaugurated in 2021. “But 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.”
Fast forward two and a half years, and the Biden administration is now waiving 26 federal regulations to resume construction of Donald Trump’s border wall in Starr County, Texas, as the White House faces political attacks from Republicans over a surge in border crossings and pressure from Democrats to do more to address the humanitarian crisis in cities like Chicago. The president has insisted that his position hasn’t changed and that his hands were tied by Congress: “We had no choice,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said at a press conference Thursday. “It was mandated by law.” But in defying over two-dozen laws, including environmental rules, to resume the wall—a stark reversal of his definitive campaign and presidential promise—the president has opened himself up to withering criticism from allies and gloating from the MAGA crowd.
Trump adviser Jason Miller said that Biden’s move was not only a “flip-flop” but a “validation” of the former president’s border policies. Meanwhile, Texas Democrat Henry Cuellar called the “border wall is a 14th century solution to a 21st century problem.”
Biden suggested Thursday that he agrees with Cuellar’s sentiment—but his administration has mixed messages. Asked by reporters if he believed “the border wall works,” he simply said: “No.” But, he said, the administration had no other choice: “The money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated.”
“I can’t stop that,” he added.
It is true that the wall funding was appropriated in 2019, before he took office. But the outrage over his move is justified. His pledge was not to try his very best to not build any more border barriers and convince Congress to reappropriate funds. It was: “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.”
Mayorkas, meanwhile, seemed to offer contradictory explanations for the new construction: “It was mandated by law,” he said at a press conference in Mexico. “Our policy remains as it was since day one. We are opposed to the construction of the wall.” But, in a notice posted late Wednesday to the federal registry, the Homeland Security secretary implied that the administration viewed the wall as an effective deterrent to undocumented border crossings: “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas.”
The move—along with the administration’s decision to resume deportations to Venezuela—comes amid a surge in border crossings that has become both a significant political and humanitarian issue for the administration. But neither problem will be fixed by the continuance of Trump’s hard-right border policies; real solutions will require comprehensive reform and, in the immediate term, more resources to cities straining to welcome the migrants being bussed in by Republican governors. “A border wall has never been, and never will be, a moral or practical solution to the very real challenges faced by our immigration system,” said Representative Delia Ramirez of Chicago, where leaders have ramped up calls for more federal support. “It is disappointing that more taxpayers’ money will be wasted on the construction of a painful anti-migrant symbol that endangers asylum seekers, scars sacred lands, and consumes resources we could be using to provide relief.”
Eric Lutz
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