Biden reverses ‘not another foot’ pledge, quietly gives go-ahead to fill gaps in U.S.-Mexico border wall

(Video Credit: KGUN9)

After endlessly bashing former President Trump over building the border wall, President Joe Biden has quietly reversed course and given the nod to fill in gaps at the U.S.-Mexico border near Yuma, Arizona.

During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden over and over again declared, “Not another foot,” as he blasted Trump for the construction of the border wall. But on Thursday, his administration approved plans to finish the wall near Yuma under the guise of “safety concerns” for illegal immigrants.

Four gaps that have made Yuma one of the busiest corridors for illegal immigration crossings on the border will now be filled, according to Fox News.

The plan was authorized by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. But it is a plan that began during the Trump administration.

The Biden administration is touting it as an effort to “deploy modern, effective border measures” and improve “safety and security along the Southwest Border.”

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the completion of the project near the Morelos Dam will protect migrants who can get hurt slipping down a slope or drowning when walking through a low section of the Colorado River.

A 5-year-old girl crossing the water in a group drowned near the dam on June 6 when she became separated from her mother. The child’s body was later found in the river. According to NBC News, the girl was believed to be Jamaican.

Funds for the project will come out of Homeland Security’s 2021 budget. Initial plans were to take the funding from the Defense Department but that changed, evidently.

Border Patrol agents have stopped migrants more than 160,000 times from January through June this year from crossing over into the U.S. via the Yuma corridor, according to Fox News. That is roughly quadruple the number of migrant stops from this time last year in that sector.

The only other sectors on the border that saw more traffic than the Yuma corridor were Del Rio and the Rio Grande Valley in South Texas.

Trump attempted to stem the flow of illegal immigrants in the Yuma sector by building a wall or reinforcing portions already present. A plaque was mounted along the border in 2020 with his name on it. Unfortunately, Trump did not have enough time to see the wall finished and when Biden came into office, he halted all construction… until now.

Biden changed course after Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.) called on the president to finish the wall. Republicans have made similar calls to have the wall completed.

(Video Credit: News 11 Yuma)

In a 2019 op-ed published in the Miami Herald, Biden stated that the phrase “build the wall” was “divorced from reality” and a wall “won’t stop the flow of illegal narcotics or human trafficking, both of which come primarily through legal ports of entry.”

“Nor will it stem the numbers of undocumented, most of whom over-stay legal visas,” he claimed at the time.

Biden also told NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro in an interview in August 2020, “There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1.”

“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,” he vowed.

Since calling for a halt to all border wall funding when he came into office, Biden has begun to ramp up border security measures under the radar. He has also approved the use of billions of dollars that Congress appropriated for the wall’s construction.

The president has been sued numerous times by Republicans for halting the construction of the border wall.

“The Biden administration’s flat refusal to use funds that have already been set aside by Congress to build the border wall is not only illegal and unconstitutional. It’s also wrong,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton proclaimed in a lawsuit that was filed in October 2021.

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