By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ
McALLEN, Texas | The handy optic: Hey, Democrats can also build Border Walls. President Joe Biden is now into it, as they say in fads. News reports have it that a surge in migrants arriving at the country's southern border is on the rise again.
Biden wants some action.
This excerpt from The Associated Press: [ The Biden administration announced on Wednesday that it had waived 26 federal laws in South Texas to allow border wall construction, marking the administration’s first use of a sweeping executive power employed often during the Trump presidency.
The Department of Homeland Security posted the announcement on the U.S. Federal Registry with few details outlining the construction in Starr County, which is part of a busy Border Patrol sector seeing "high illegal entry." According to government data, about 245,000 illegal entries have been recorded in this region during the current fiscal year.
"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, the DHS secretary, stated in the notice.
The Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act and Endangered Species Act were some of the federal laws waived by DHS to make way for construction that will use funds from a congressional appropriation in 2019 for border wall construction. The waivers avoid time-consuming reviews and lawsuits challenging violation of environmental laws.
Starr County’s hilly ranchlands, sitting between Zapata and McAllen, is home to about 65,000 residents sparsely populating about 1,200 square miles (3,108 square kilometers) that form part of the Lower Rio Grande Valley National Wildlife Refuge.
Although no maps were provided in the announcement, a previous map shared during the gathering of public comments shows the piecemeal construction will add up to an additional 20 miles to the existing border barrier system in the area. Starr County Judge Eloy Vera said it will start south of the Falcon Dam and go past Salineño, Texas.
"The other concern that we have is that area is highly erosive. There’s a lot of arroyos," Vera said, pointing out the creeks cutting through the ranchland and leading into the river. ]
It smacks of that same Ol' Band-Aid approach we have seen for years now. Biden is looking at the 2024 election and thinking he has to have something to tell voters about his response to the migrant surge.
As always, the environment be damned...
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Border Wall will never be completed. 1,600 miles from Brownsville to California! Fugettaboutit!!!
ReplyDeleteEcho that.
DeleteBoring now.
ReplyDeleteIf only they had a serious approach to the problem! They don't. Democrats and Republicans need the border invasion as a political wedge issue!
ReplyDeleteI've been saying that same thing for years!
DeleteAgree entirely. What would our ever-nagging, do-nothing political parties without abortion or the Border Wall? Yeah...
Delete