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| AP Photo/Matt York, File |
Trump's border wall money is about to expire as DHS stymies construction
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is poised to run out the clock on former President Donald Trump’s border wall, leaving potentially billions of dollars in unspent money and hundreds of miles of fencing unfinished.
Some $200 million in wall money will expire at the end of this fiscal year in September, said House Appropriations Committee Chair Kay Granger, Texas Republican. Another $2.6 billion more will expire in coming years, she said.
“We’re just going to let that happen?” Ms. Granger asked during a hearing with Mr. Mayorkas last month.
The question was repeated over and over, but the secretary wouldn’t give a straight answer.
“I can assure you that we will comply with all our legal obligations,” Mr. Mayorkas said.
Six years after Mr. Trump began his wall project and more than two years after President Biden declared a halt to construction, it remains an acute political problem.
The Border Patrol’s senior leaders say the wall works and they need more of it.
Mr. Mayorkas, carrying out Mr. Biden’s campaign promise not to build another foot of wall, has largely resisted his own agents’ entreaties and rejected their expertise. He tells them what they really need are more personnel and technology.
The agents got 458 miles of new fencing under Mr. Trump. Of that, 373 miles were upgrades for previous barriers and 85 miles were in unfenced locations.
Congress funded about $4.5 billion, and Mr. Trump, unsatisfied with that total, siphoned $600 million from a Treasury Department forfeiture fund and $9.9 billion from Pentagon accounts. Altogether, it was enough to build the 458 completed miles, with another 280 miles in the works. ---READ MORE HERE
Today, the House Committee on Homeland Security, led by Chairman Mark E. Green, MD (R-TN), held Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas accountable on behalf of the American people for both a historic crisis at our borders and a woefully inadequate Fiscal Year 2024 budget proposal for the Department.
In this budget request, the Biden administration is saying the quiet part out loud by requesting funding for ‘border management’ instead of ‘border security,’ signaling it has no intention of actually securing our borders. Today, this Committee received confirmation that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas want a blank check from Congress to continue funding their self-made national security crisis at our borders at the expense of the American people’s safety and taxpayer dollars. This border crisis sits squarely on Secretary Mayorkas’ shoulders, as he has failed to fulfill his duties as Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
In his opening line of questioning, Chairman Green detailed how Secretary Mayorkas has either misled Congress or illustrated his incompetence: --->READ MORE HERE
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