Joe Biden to stop construction of Donald Trump's border wall once in office but will not touch the part already built
President-elect Joe Biden is set to stop construction of incumbent President Donald Trump’s southern border wall as soon as he takes office in January but will spare whatever has already been built. The Trump administration has spent a whopping $15 billion reinforcing areas with existing barriers and building a new bollard fencing which is 30 foot tall.
The Dallas Morning News said in a report on Wednesday, November 11, that while 400 miles of the black metal slats have been put in place, only 12 miles of the border did not have some kind of barrier before the construction work started. The border project has been Trump’s favorite and he had been speaking about it even before becoming the president in 2016. During his campaign for the president’s office that year, his supporters would chant “Build the wall” at his rallies and they continue to do it even today. Trump also went to the extent of partially shutting down the government to ensure the controversial wall project progressed.
In a bid to make America secure from illegal immigrants, drug traffickers and criminals from Mexico, the GOP leader vowed to create an unscalable wall that ran for thousands of kilometers from the eastern to the western part. However, there have been reports that smugglers were making their way by sawing through new sections of the wall.
Biden, who was announced the president-elect last Saturday, November 7, vowed during his campaign to stop the wall’s construction. He however said that he will not bring down the part that Trump has already built. America is set to reopen its doors for refugees from other nations where they face oppression, reversing the harsh stance that the Trump administration took. Also in a virtual interview with journalists from the National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists in August, Biden told National Public Radio’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro: “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration.. I'm going to make sure that we have border protection, but it's going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it. And at the ports of entry — that's where all the bad stuff is happening.”
Henry Cueller says voters rejected Trump because of the wall
Meanwhile, Texas Democratic Representative Henry Cueller, who won his reelection bid on November 3, said the voters were not happy with the border wall and that is why they rejected a second Trump term. “It was a referendum on the wall,” the veteran Congressman, who represents Texas's 28th District, which spans from San Antonio to the US-Mexico border, said. Trump though won the Lone Star State after an early scare.
Cueller is also on the House Appropriations Committee and worked to stop Trump’s alleged budget maneuvers that channelized billions from military spending to build the wall when the Congress stopped short of approving the whopping expenditure. The 65-year-old lawmaker, who is in office since 2005, feels right-wing politicians have little interest in pursuing the wall project and it will be forgotten once Trump departs.
It may be mentioned here that just days ahead of Election Day, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said that by the time 2020 ends, 450 miles of the wall will be finished. Well, after the election results, the progress of the project could hit a wall.