Biden to build border wall in Texas, citing 'immediate need' after 2 MILLION illegal immigrants enter US in 2023

In response to surging illegal immigration, President Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there is an "acute and immediate need" to build a border wall in Texas and waive federal laws in order to do so.

Shortly after Biden was sworn into office in 2021, he stopped construction of the border wall after promising as a presidential candidate that there would "not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration," calling the construction of the wall under the Trump administration "just one example of the prior administration’s misplaced priorities and failure to manage migration in a safe, orderly and humane way."

  
According to Fox News, DHS posted an announcement on the US Federal Register for construction in Starr County in the Rio Grande Valley Sector, where the White House said there is "high illegal entry."

Following more than 245,000 encounters with illegal immigrants in that sector this fiscal year, Mayorkas stated that he is using his authority provided by Congress to waive 26 federal laws, including the Clean Air Act, Endangered Species Act, and Safe Drinking Water Act. "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 pursuant to sections 102(a) and 102(b) of [the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996].”

According to Fox News, the waiver is for barrier projects announced in June, and it will cover roughly 17 miles in Starr County.

In response to the announcement, former president and current GOP frontrunner for the 2024 nomination Donald Trump told Fox News, "Biden sees our country is being invaded. What is he going to do about the 15 million people from prisons, from mental institutions, insane asylums, and terrorists that have already come into our country?"

The DHS announcement comes on the heels of record numbers of illegal immigrants coming across the southern border and intense political criticism from both Republicans and Democrats to address it. It was revealed last week that September saw over 260,000 illegal immigrant encounters, the highest monthly total on record.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul, who previously encouraged illegal immigration, said Sunday, "Well, we want them to have a limit on who can come across the border. It is too open right now. People coming from all over the world are finding their way through simply saying they need asylum.
 
According to CBP data, fiscal year 2023 has seen over 2.2 million illegal immigrants cross the border. The historic numbers have followed the Biden administration’s rollback of Trump-era immigration policies, including its halt of construction on the border wall, selling off border wall materials, and suing Texas over erecting border barriers.

The Trump campaign said in a statement to Fox, "President Trump is always right. That’s why he built close to 500 miles of powerful new wall on the border, and it would have been finished by now. Instead, Crooked Joe Biden turned our country into one giant sanctuary for dangerous criminal aliens."
 

In September, the House Oversight Committee announced that they were investigating reports that the Biden administration was selling off materials that had been obtained for the border wall.

"The Biden Administration’s decision to sell already purchased border materials is waste and abuse of taxpayer dollars. The United States is facing the worst border crisis in our history due to the Biden Administration’s policies. We should be using tools already at our disposal to stop the surge of illegal border crossings," said Chairman James Comer.