Republicans have lashed out at the Biden government over reports that Washington is “quietly auctioning off” unused parts of the US-Mexico border wall for a hefty sum.
Republican Senator Roger Wicker was quoted by US media as saying that “This [reported] sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame." He condemned the move as "outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering."
Wicker was echoed by his colleague James Lankford, who argued that "the pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration."
The same view was shared by another GOP senator, Elise Stefanik, who slammed the first sale of border wall parts as "reckless," adding, "Our borders continue to be overrun by an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants, turning every district into a border district and compromising our national security."
Republican Nicole Malliotakis, for her part, insisted that US President Joe Biden “has no regard for taxpayer dollars or how his open border is bankrupting communities across the country that are footing the bill for his failures."
Her colleague Juan Ciscomani, in turn, reproached Biden for his "refusal to act" to stem the migration flows, urging the federal government to utilize “every tool in the toolbox to secure our [US] border."
"Instead of putting these materials to their intended use, they have been squandered, first collecting dust in the desert and now being auctioned off," Ciscoman pointed out.
The remarks followed a US newspaper reporting that GovPlanet, an online auction marketplace for surplus government materials, recently oversaw the $2 million sale of 81 lots of steel square structural tubes that were apparently intended for the US border wall.
The report came as the US Department of Defense confirmed to the newspaper that those tubes are "excess border wall materials that the US Army Corps of Engineers turned over to the [Pentagon’s] DLA [Defense Logistics Agency] for disposition and are now for sale.”
This was preceded by a group of GOP members introducing legislation titled the Finish It Act in May, which stipulates extending the border wall by means of using the previously bought and unused border wall panels.
When entering office in January 2021, Biden, for his part, issued an order to halt all border wall construction, dismissing Trump’s program as “a waste of money” that was “not a serious policy solution.”
The migration crisis, meanwhile, shows no sign of abating in the US, with a whopping 1,973,092 encounters at the US-Mexico border so far this year, according to data from US Customs and Border Patrol. The number stood at 1,947,310 within the same period in 2022, and 1,332,845 in 2021.