The Biden administration has quietly approved construction of a section of the border wall with Mexico near Yuma, Arizona to fill four large gaps in the existing barriers.
In a statement put out Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security indicated that agency chief Alejandro Mayorkas had authorized Customs and Border Protection to complete work “to close four gaps located within an incomplete border barrier project near the Morelos Dam in the US Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector.”
The DHS specified that the work would be funded using cash from the department’s fiscal year 2021 outlays, and would be preceded by a standard environmental assessment.
“The gaps are located within the former Yuma 6 project area, a border barrier project that was previously funded by the Department of Defense’s military construction appropriation pursuant to 10 USC 2808 [funds used by Trump to build his border wall, ed.]. Due to the proximity to the Morelos Dam and the swift moving Colorado River, this area presents safety and life hazard risks for migrants attempting to cross into the United States where there is a risk of drownings and injuries from falls. This area also poses a life and safety risk to first responders and agents responding to incidents in this area,” the DHS explained.
The construction is a break with Joe Biden’s pledge on the campaign trail in 2020 that “not another foot” of additional work on Trump’s “racist” and “xenophobic” border wall would be allowed under his administration.
The Yuma Sector of the border is a significant corridor for would-be immigrants attempting to make their way into the United States, with the CBP reporting stopping over 160,000 people attempting to cross over from Mexico through this quadrant of the frontier between January and June alone – nearly four times the number recorded in all of 2021.
The planned construction in the Yuma Sector isn’t the only place where the Biden administration has quietly provided cash to fill in gaps in the wall.
Late last year, Mayorkas directed the DHS to finish up work on gaps in the barrier where necessary to “address life, safety, and environmental issues,” as well as “other remediation required to protect border communities.” In February, activists in southern Texas accused the CBP of erecting sections of wall in the Rio Grande Valley, with the agency assuring that the construction wasn’t a border wall at all, but just repair work to repair old earthen levees to be complemented by 13 miles (21 km) of 15-foot concrete panels topped with 6-foot guard rails. Earlier this month, the DHS greenlit additional construction near San Diego, California to refurbish a “deteriorated" ocean side barrier.
The Biden administration made stripping the Trump border wall of funding one of its top priorities after coming into office in January 2021, with the president signing nearly a dozen executive orders and decrees aimed at reversing his predecessor’s hardline stance on illegal immigration, and announcing plans to replace Trump’s “dumb border” with an AI-powered “smart border” featuring infrared cameras, biometrics, facial recognition, drones, iris scanning, DNA collection and motion sensors.
The Biden White House’s policies have been blamed for a massive spike in illegal immigration, with the CBP recording a historically unprecedented jump in enforcement encounters, as well as human and drug smuggling. The CBP reported over 207,400 migrant encounters in the month of June, below the all-time record of 239,000 set in May, with June becoming the fourth month in a row of 200,000+ monthly encounters. Encounters surpassed one million people in April, with stats rapidly on their way to topping the 1.72 million enforcement detentions reported in fiscal year 2021, which ended in September.