It is said that promises go with the wind but in the case of Joe Biden and the wall on the border with Mexicohave been dragged by a migration crisis and under the political and electoral pressures. The Administration of the American president has authorized the construction of 32 kilometers of “barriers and roads” in Starr County, in Texasleaving for it 26 federal laws suspendedincluding numerous environmental protection.
The decision had been known since June but was made official on Wednesday night with the publication in the official journal of a document of the Department of Homeland Security signed by its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas. It is protected by a law passed in 2006 that authorizes the president to ignore these federal regulations. AND donald trump He drew on that authority frequently during his tenure, in which he built 724 kilometers of the wall, one of the central promises of the campaign with which the Republican became president, but it is the first time that a Democratic leader has used it.
“In my Administration Not a single foot (30 centimeters) more of wall will be built“Biden had said in August 2020, and a few months later, on his first day in the White House, he assured that “building a huge wall that covers the entire southern border is not a serious political solution.”
In our #nabjnahj2020 interview, @JoeBiden He promised that ‘not another foot of wall would be constructed’ on the border. Watch our exchange: pic.twitter.com/rM9OgsYicU
— Lulu NYT (@lourdesgnavarro) August 5, 2020
This same Thursday Biden responded with a resounding “no” when asked if he believed walls workand tried to explain his decision by assuring that the money had already been appropriated in 2019 for construction and that, although he tried to have it used for other purposes, he did not succeed.
President Biden explains why border wall construction has begun in Texas citing this was already appropriated money for it. He also answered “no” to a question on whether border walls work. pic.twitter.com/W9m4Wr16Jf
— CSPAN (@cspan) October 5, 2023
Protests and crisis
Biden’s unfulfilled promise, in any case, has outraged many activists and Democratic politicians like Texan representative Henry Cuéllar, who has assured that “a border wall is a s14th century solution for a 21st century problem“and he said that”will not improve border security in the county.”
The Administration also assures that “currently there is a acute and immediate need to build physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border in order to prevent illegal entries”according to the words of Mayorkas in the official document.
The official figures for last year are about to be made public but it is already known that, after a decline in the summer, they have risen again. In September It is estimated that the annual maximum of interceptions of undocumented migrants with more than 200,000, 50,000 of them Venezuelans. And only last Saturday 9,000 were made.
The situation has raised the pressure on Biden, questioned by the republicans but alsor democratic leaders as JB Pritzker, the governor of Illinoiswhere Texas has sent 15,000 immigrants or Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, city that is finding itself unable to respond to the massive arrival of migrants seeking asylum, which have been close to 120,000 in the last year and are currently arriving at a rate of 600 a day.
“The lack of intervention and coordination of the federal government on the border has created a unsustainable situation“Pritzker wrote this Monday in a letter to Biden. For his part, Adams is carrying out a tour of Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador to try to discourage migrants from traveling to the US. The first New York mayor is one of those who has hardened his message immigration, bringing him closer to the traditional one of the Republicans, although he has discredited his main advisor on the matter, who had called for “closing the border” and has recalled that this is not the official municipal policy.
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Migration is also one of the topics on the agenda of the trip and the meetings held this Thursday in Mexico by the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken; Mayorkas and Attorney General Merrick Garland with the President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the Mexican secretary of security, Rosa Icela Rodríguez, and the Foreign Minister, Alicia Bárcena Ibarra. And it is a central question in social but also political life. Many Republicans in the now paralyzed Congress, including the aspiring speaker Jim Jordanthey have conditioned for example the approval of new aid packages to Ukraine to invest in border security.
The same happens with another issue that is addressed in bilateral meetings, and that is taking a central role in the electoral campaign for 2024; he fentanyl. Several Republicans and at least three candidates from the conservative formation for the 2024 presidential elections (the former president Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy) have advocated for the US military to act against cartels inside Mexico. Democratic congressman Joaquín Castro will respond to that claim this Friday, who will present a resolution in the Lower House that calls for “respecting the sovereignty of Mexico and condemning calls for military action without the consent of Mexico or authorization from Congress.”