DHS Mayorkas OKs Closure of Some Gaps in the Border Wall

President Joe Biden’s border agency will close up a few gaps and doorways in some sections of President Donald Trump’s incomplete border wall, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).

But the additional work is not intended to extend the wall against the economic migrants who are being allowed by Biden’s deputies to take Americans’ jobs at lower wages, to crowd into Americans’ housing and schools, and to spike retail sales.

Instead, according to an agency statement, the project will fund “activities necessary to address life, safety, environmental, and remediation requirements for border barrier projects.”

The statement also suggests that the agency might sell the not-yet-installed steel bollards ordered by Trump: “Activities include but are not limited to … Disposing of residual materials not required for completion of the work as identified.”

The statement said:

Work will be completed within the Tucson, El Paso, and Yuma Sectors to address safety concerns by closing construction access gaps that were left open at the time of the border barrier construction pause, and will also include adding missing [electronically controlled] gates, addressing incomplete foundations, and connecting power to gates that are already hung but are currently inoperable.  Rescue gates provide access for Border Patrol agents and first responders to access irrigation canals in emergency situations where the water is fast moving and extremely dangerous.  These emergency rescue gates are currently inoperable due to missing hardware or being welded shut.

CBP will assess additional remediation needs in the San Diego, El Centro, Yuma, El Paso, and Del Rio Sectors and will prioritize completion of drainage and erosion control measures, safety work on border and access roads, and remediation of temporary use areas used for construction.

The statement does not say if the agency will complete the half-installed surveillance technology along the border wall sections.

If the walls weren’t absurd enough… here’s a wide open door. pic.twitter.com/3VwTSHER4A

— John Washington (@jbwashing) October 27, 2021

Biden’s border agency is run by Alejandro Mayorkas, a pro-migration zealot who was welcomed by Americans into the United States in 1960 as a child refugee from Cuba.

Since taking the job in February 2021, Mayorkas has used his agency authority to cut open numerous legal doorways — such as asylum claims — in Americans’ national border.

He maintains his support for large-scale migration despite the huge civic and economic damage that cheap imported labor inflicts on Americans and the United States. In November, Mayorkas showed his support for continued migration into the United States, when he was asked Tuesday by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR): “What should be a higher priority of the United States Government? Securing our border or giving amnesty to illegal aliens who are already here?”

“Justice is our priority,” Mayorkas declared at a Senate hearing, adding “That includes securing our border and providing [asylum] relief to those [migrants] who qualify for it under our laws.”

But Mayorkas’ welcome for migrants is being curtailed by Biden’s political team who recognize how Mayorkas’ flood of migrants has damaged Biden’s ratings among swing voters. The announcement may be intended by the political team to show some support for Americans’ concerns.

Yet Biden and his deputies in the executive are refusing to continue building the wall, despite orders from the Congress which allocated roughly $16.4 billion for the project.

The refusal to follow Congress’ orders is arguably illegal, but the Democrat-friendly General Accounting Office has deemed Biden’s shutdown to be merely a “pause.”

“The [GAO] decision splits hairs to justify actions that, just two years ago, were determined to be contrary to ‘the faithful execution of the law,’” said a June 2021 statement by Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL.) and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the top GOP members of the Senate’s appropriations panels.

A July report noted that Biden’s deputies are spending money to not build the wall. The report said:

DOD [the Department of Defense] will spend – at a minimum – $1.837 to $2.087 billion to suspend and terminate border wall contracts. During the Trump Administration, DOD had obligated roughly $10 billion toward border wall construction projects. This means that the Biden Administration will have likely wasted 20 percent of the DOD funding that had been allocated toward border wall construction.

Biden’s inaction has left a vast amount of construction materials sitting unused along the border, even as hundreds of thousands of migrants cross the border into U.S. jobs. The Atlantic Magazine reported December 20:

Along with the steel, contractors have left light poles, electrical supplies, crushed aggregate, processed riprap rock, sand, culvert materials, and piping—altogether worth about $350 million, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers—sitting unused in the desert. The Corp wouldn’t itemize costs of materials, and anti-wall watchdogs (as well as some basic math) put the total number significantly higher.

…

Although the unused light poles, rebar, and other material can probably be easily repurposed, the steel itself, mostly in the form of bollards, poses more of a problem. Just one site in New Mexico has about 31,000 bollards, according to calculations I made from aerial photographs. Another 20,000 bollards are spread across four sites in Arizona; a few thousand more sit in the chaparral hills outside San Diego. I spoke with one steel manufacturer that supplied material for the border wall. The company’s spokesperson didn’t want to be quoted by name talking about government contracts, but estimated that each bollard costs about $9,000, not including modifications (welding to steel panels and filling with rebar and concrete) or installation costs. If that number is close to accurate, about half a billion dollars’ worth of steel is sitting in the sun in New Mexico, Arizona, and California.

Many polls show that labor migration is deeply unpopular because it damages ordinary Americans’ career opportunities, cuts their wages, and raises their rents.

Migration also curbs Americans’ productivity, distorts their economy, shrinks their political clout, widens regional wealth gaps, radicalizes their democratic, compromise-promoting civic culture, and allows elites to ignore despairing Americans at the bottom of society.

For many years, a wide variety of polls has shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based,  bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.

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