The Biden administration has notified all border wall contractors that construction must stop Tuesday night (Jan. 26), according to U.S. media reports. A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) official said Biden’s order to call off the border wall may be illegal because the president has the authority to cancel Department of Defense funding for the project, but not the border wall funding already paid for by Congress.
According to Rep. Henry Cuellar (R-Texas), a Texas congressman and vice chairman of the Homeland Security Subcommittee, major contractors have been instructed that construction work on the U.S.-Mexico border wall must stop by Jan. 27, although certain activities may continue as necessary for security reasons.
The border wall shutdown is in line with an executive order issued on the first day of the Biden Administration that terminated all border wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, including projects used for construction after military funds were transferred and projects appropriated by Congress for construction.
CBP Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan said in an interview with The Washington Times that as of Jan. 20, they were still using funds approved by Congress three years ago for the wall’s construction. He said the president cannot unilaterally dismiss funding that Congress has previously approved.
“He’s basically telling CBP to go against the law and force a halt to construction,” Morgan said.
James P. Pfiffner, professor emeritus at George Mason University and an expert on presidential powers, agreed that the president can change the timing of spending if Congress appropriates money for the wall, but should not block it.
The president has some discretion over the timing of spending, and it is reasonable for certain funds to be delayed,” Pfiffner said. If there are serious delays, the administration should be notifying Congress of the extension, but it cannot delay spending beyond the end of a fiscal year.”
Morgan said construction of the border wall has now come to a complete halt since Biden was sworn in on Jan. 20, except for some subsequent security fixes to the facility.
“It’s a lie to say the wall doesn’t work,” Morgan said, “and they’re not going to find Border Patrol agents on the front lines today to tell them that the wall doesn’t work.”
Brandon Judd, chairman of the National Border Patrol Council, which represents the Border Patrol, echoed Morgan’s sentiments. He said a border wall would help reduce the number of illegal aliens entering the border.
As an example, Judd said that during a five-day period last week, the western part of Tucson, Arizona, where there is no border wall, found about 2,006 illegal aliens and made 915 arrests, for a success rate of about 46 percent. But in the eastern part of the city, where the wall is built, they detected only 1,180 entrants and made 881 arrests, for a success rate of about 75 percent.
As of last week, there were between 27 and 30 contractors working on the wall. In each case, the government must now negotiate a settlement to pay them for the work that has been done and the materials that have been purchased, as well as for the cost of any maintenance measures they must do.
Morgan argues that the decision to cancel the border wall construction will not actually result in many savings for taxpayers. In addition, 5,000 people worked for contractors on the wall before the construction was called off. In the midst of a viral pandemic economy, they just lost their jobs.
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