A Border Wall Comes Back in Style
The Biden administration just paved the way for construction to begin again. What happened?
You know something? A border wall would be a good idea. That’s effectively the admission of … [checks notes] … the Biden administration.
“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,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas Wednesday in an official filing in the Federal Register. To help this process along, the Associated Press notes that Mayorkas “waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction,” including numerous environmental laws.
It was, the AP adds, “the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency,” and it’ll depend on money appropriated in 2019 while Donald Trump was still in office.
We can’t corroborate it, but we believe the AP’s reporter then fainted, and somewhere by a border fence, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez started uncontrollably sobbing.
During the Trump years, roughly 450 miles of border wall were erected. Though far from perfect, the problem of illegal immigration was far closer to being manageable than it had been or is now.
Just four years ago, a border wall was “racist.” During the 2020 campaign, Joe Biden promised, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration.” On his first day in office, he issued a proclamation ending border wall construction while sanctimoniously declaring, “Building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.” In 2021, Mayorkas added, “We do not agree with a building of the wall.”
Team Biden even sued any Republican governors who dared continuing to set up border barriers. Administration lawyers are literally in court today trying to remove the floating barrier in the Rio Grande set up by the state of Texas.
The invasion that began in January 2021 and has exploded ever since was precisely Biden’s intent.
So why the sudden change of heart? The crisis has gotten so bad that Democrats in sanctuary jurisdictions are bitterly complaining and even declaring states of emergency. New York City Mayor Eric Adams is traveling to Mexico this week to tell would-be migrants not to come.
Biden’s ecofascist allies predictably started caterwauling about the wall. “It’s disheartening to see President Biden stoop to this level, casting aside our nation’s bedrock environmental laws to build ineffective wildlife-killing border walls,” said Laiken Jordahl at the Center for Biological Diversity. “It will stop wildlife migrations dead in their tracks. It will destroy a huge amount of wildlife refuge land. And it’s a horrific step backwards for the borderlands.”
You know who else it will stop? Human migrants, many with criminal records and intent. And as far as a “horrific step backwards,” let’s go back to the record to see what a few prominent Democrats said about building a border wall before it became politically advantageous to oppose it.
In 2006, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Chuck Schumer were among the 90 Democrats in both chambers who voted for the Secure Fence Act, which provided for 700 miles of physical barriers along the southern border. Obama said it would “help stem some of the tide of illegal immigration in this country.” They all said something similar about how important border security was.
Today, Democrats have the Leftmedia “fact-checkers” to debunk any comparison because the 2006 law was a fence not a wall and those are totally separate things.
Anyway.
Here’s President Joe Biden at least appearing to do something about the border crisis he created. Millions of illegals have come across the U.S. border since he took office, and most of them are still here. Stopping the flow is at least the first thing if not the most important thing that must be done. Reflexively doing the opposite of Donald Trump is the last thing Biden ought to be doing, though it’s been his guiding principle for three years. If that changes even a little, it’ll be a victory for America.
Update: Given the president’s walkback, this 20 miles of wall is a lot less than initially thought.