DHS has spent $72 million to avoid building more border wall; Mayorkas, Struggling With Border Surge, Spent $72M to Stop Trump Wall

AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

DHS has spent $72 million to avoid building more border wall:

The Department of Homeland Security has spent $72 million in shutdown costs to stop building portions of former President Trump’s border wall, Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress on Wednesday.

That money went to cancel contracts and deal with supplies in the pipeline for projects Mr. Mayorkas canceled.

He said that doesn’t include money the Pentagon spent to cancel projects Mr. Trump assigned to the Defense Department to help Homeland Security build hundreds of miles of fencing.

An estimate by Sen. James Lankford last year said the Pentagon’s shutdown costs were $2 billion.

Mr. Mayorkas revealed Homeland Security’s number during a hearing on his department’s budget request for fiscal 2023.

While President Biden has not asked for any new border wall money, he is sitting on as much as $2.5 billion in money Congress previously allocated for it but which remains unspent.

Under the law, Mr. Mayorkas is required to use that money for wall building, though he has some flexibility on how to go about that. The problem is that Mr. Biden, during the 2020 campaign, insisted not “another foot” of wall would be built on his watch.

Mr. Mayorkas said he’s trying to work his way through that. --->READ MORE HERE

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Mayorkas, Struggling With Border Surge, Spent $72M to Stop Trump Wall:

Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday defended the Biden administration’s handling of the border crisis and said DHS has spent $72 million in costs to shut down construction of former President Donald Trump’s border wall.

“We inherited a broken and dismantled system that is already under strain,” Mayorkas said during a hearing before the House Appropriations DHS Subcommittee hearing Wednesday. “It was not built to manage the current levels of migration flow.”

“Only Congress can fix it,” he insisted.

“We have effectively managed an unprecedented number of noncitizens seeking to enter the United States,” he added.

Customs and Border Patrol have encountered 221,30 million illegal immigrants at the Southwest border last month, totaling nearly 1.06 million for just the first half of fiscal year 2022, according to data released by CPB.

DHS released more than 80,000 of those migrants, raising the total number of illegal immigrants released under the Biden administration to 836,225. --->READ MORE HERE

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