“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.” – Alejandro Mayorkas, Homeland Security Secretary
President Joe Biden, who ran his campaign on the idea that “not another foot” of wall would be built along the southern border, has now used his executive authority to waive federal laws that would have prohibited the continuation of the border wall along Mexico. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) authorized U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to move forward with the planning and execution of up to approximately 20 miles of border barrier system, with steel bollard panels placed in U.S. Border Patrol’s (USBP) Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector, as mandated by the DHS Fiscal Year (FY) 2019 border barrier appropriation. In short, Biden’s gonna help build the wall.
The Venezuelans proved too much political pressure for the once-progressive president. This year’s influx of illegal immigrants brought the issue home for the entire country, from California to New York to Boston. I don’t have the stats, but I bet 2023 will go down as a record breaker. Our bureaucracy couldn’t handle it. The most our government could figure out was buying them bus tickets and hotel rooms. Couldn’t let them work because they need work permits, and that’s a political process. Can’t give them housing because all the housing got bought up. Biden, locked out of any hopes of a legislative solution to the problem, is now beating the same nail that his predecessors have hammered for decades.
Biden, attempting to appeal to every American, will likely anger all of them. Republicans won’t care: they don’t use objective reality when they evaluate anything. The toughness of Biden’s policies on migrants at the border does not matter to them. The young progressives that detest Trumpian xenophobia are disgusted, of course, and Biden is not cute enough to slide by with projections of meekness. When asked point blank about the wall, Joe musters a weak defense, “I had no choice.” Apparently, the law was already written out and now Joe has to follow orders. And if waiving federal law needs to be done to do it, well I guess his hands are tied? Unlikely. Biden isn’t cute enough to get away with it.
Already, the Venezuelan arc has ended. Israel and Hamas delivered us from that news cycle a few weeks ago. Well, the Venezuelans are still here, but people not directly involved don’t seem all that interested anymore. There is portent in it, however. Palestine shows us the futility of wall building every day. The mistakes keep being made.
