After $ 15 billion and 450 miles, Joe Biden will stop the border wall, Trump’s flagship project

WASHINGTON – Mexico has never paid anything. It’s less than half finished. And on or soon after January 20, construction will come to an abrupt halt on the “great beautiful wall” President Donald Trump has promised to build along the US-Mexico border.

The project has cost $ 15 billion so far, most of which has been diverted from the military budget after Congress refused to provide full funding.

President-elect Joe Biden vowed during the campaign to kill the project, but leave whatever the Trump administration leaves behind.

At the moment, that’s roughly 400 miles of levee wall and 30-foot-high fencing, although almost all of that mileage has already had some sort of barrier before Trump took office. Only 12 miles did not.

The rest is to upgrade or replace shorter, less sturdy fences, or a second layer of barrier meant to slow migrants and smugglers long enough for border patrol to arrive.

“It was a referendum on the wall,” Representative Henry Cuellar, a Democrat from Laredo, said of the election. Cuellar fought on the Appropriations Committee to thwart Trump’s budget maneuvers that sapped billions of dollars in defense spending on his favorite project.

Trump and his supporters saw the wall both as a real deterrent against smuggling and illegal border crossing, and as a powerful symbol that uninvited migrants were not welcome and that the United States was strengthening the security. For immigrant advocates and for many Mexicans, this has been an affront.

While Biden will not push for dismantling Trump’s physical legacy, he will lift strong restrictions on refugee admissions and a host of other immigration policies put in place by executive order.

A wall of the ladder demanded by Trump was not even a minor priority during Obama’s years for Republicans when they controlled both the House and the Senate, and Cuellar sees little political will to do so. once gone.

“The wall appeared after Trump entered. I think they will lose their appetite to fight for the wall,” he said.

Five days before the election, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said by the end of the year 450 miles would be covered.

“The many miles of border wall system exist because of the will and vision of President Trump, as well as the dedication and hard work of the men and women of DHS, the Army Corps of Engineers and our colleagues. of administration, ”Wolf said in McAllen to mark the completion of 400 miles. “Although this is an important step, we are building even more walls.”

Another 210 miles are under construction, he said.

But at the current rate, contractors might only reach around 470 miles by the time Biden is sworn in.

Supporters of tighter border security say this is not enough, although they admit there is no hope that construction will continue under Biden.

They want the wall to be “completed as far as possible” – that is, other than where mountains or canyons make it unnecessary, said Ira Mehlman, spokesperson for the Federation for American Immigration. Reform.

“The border wall is not the solution to stopping illegal immigration, but it is an important part of a comprehensive strategy to stop large-scale illegal immigration,” he said. “If you leave large sections of the border, without any sort of security, secure fences, people are going to make the obvious choice to go through those areas.”

Construction continued during the pandemic.

At last count, just over 34% of the 1,954 mile border was closed. The project required 556,000 tonnes of steel and 797,000 cubic yards of concrete at last count.

As vice president during Obama’s day, Biden was tasked with working with Central America to find ways to reduce the poverty and crime that led to massive northward migration.

Its border security plans focus on improving screening at points of entry, where most illicit drugs enter the United States, as well as increasing investments in surveillance technology and working with Mexico and the countries of Central America.

Cuellar agrees that killing the border wall is not enough, and he advocates a security-conscious but wall-less approach to his fellow Democrats.

“We have to make sure that we don’t give the impression that we have open borders,” he said. “Criminal organizations hire people, they know what our policies are. We don’t want them to go and announce that there is no wall, so start coming to the United States, and then we start seeing trailers again. It’s a balance. “

The wall was Trump’s iconic promise in the 2016 campaign, and his relentless pursuit led to clashes that didn’t rock many in his own party. A 35-day government shutdown ended in January 2019 without Trump getting the $ 5.7 billion in wall funding he demanded.

Of the $ 15 billion spent so far, Congress has provided only $ 4.5 billion.

The White House tinkered with the rest from other accounts, mainly the Army Corps of Engineers, which is in charge of the wall project and many military construction projects such as hospitals and schools on military installations. .

Many such projects were put on hold when the administration decided to bypass Congress by exploiting the Pentagon budget, a move that did not suit many Republicans, in addition to infuriating Democrats.

“One of the easiest steps President Biden can take immediately will be to end the declaration of emergency, which he can do immediately through a presidential proclamation,” said Jessica Bolter, analyst. policy at the Migration Policy Institute.

Anything that hasn’t been spent can go back to the Pentagon.

The federal government has gone to court to try to force private landowners along the border to give up land or allow construction. These lawsuits will become unnecessary, Bolter said.

To actually stop construction, Biden will also have to terminate existing contracts.

The government routinely includes contract language authorizing cancellation for “convenience.”

House Democrats have tried to get copies of the Walls contracts, but the military has refused to hand them over, Cuellar said. That will change once Biden takes office, and lawmakers will soon know if the Trump administration has planted legal landmines to make it harder to shut down the project.

At the Atlantic Council, Jason Marczak, director of the Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, said the Trump administration’s “singular focus” on building walls has left related priorities overlooked.

And some of its policies have wreaked havoc the wall is supposed to prevent, such as the “counting system” which drastically limits the number of migrants allowed to seek asylum.

Marczak sees an “dire need” to restore a system allowing people with legitimate asylum claims to enter the United States, “and at the same time, deter those from crossing without permission.”

“Border security goes far beyond a wall,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how big a wall is when people have no choice but to migrate because of security concerns in their own country or because of the economic devastation of COVID-19. They will migrate. “