President Joe Biden’s decision to proceed with construction of a wall on the southern United States border is “pure publicity,” according to Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.
"It's pure publicity,” the Mexican leader said Friday, one day after a visit from a delegation of U.S. Cabinet officials. "They don't want to [build more sections of the wall]. That's what they told us.”
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Biden's team is caught between a Democratic electorate that regards the border wall as a symbol of all they loathe in former President Donald Trump and the record-high border crossings that have stoked political and policy pressure to curb illegal migration. Biden authorized new wall construction while blaming Trump for it.
“The border wall — the money was appropriated for the border wall,” Biden told reporters on Thursday. “I tried to get [Congress] to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”
Biden’s progressive allies rejected that explanation.
“The Biden administration was not required to expand construction of the border wall — and they certainly were not required to waive several environmental laws to expedite the building," Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said Thursday. "The president needs to take responsibility for this decision and reverse course.”
The wall construction is being restarted amid a surge in border crossings, driven in part by Venezuelans drawn by “a mixture of good news and half-baked rumors,” as El Pais put it, pertaining to a limited availability of work permits for Venezuelans, against the backdrop of temporary protected status for people who can show that they face threats from Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro’s regime.
“People get through every day,” Alejandro Cardenas, who graduated from the University of Caracas with a degree in architecture, told the Madrid-based media outlet. “Today, I am going in with God’s blessing.”
Cardenas aimed to follow in his cousin’s footsteps at a location where the Rio Grande “is just a stream 13 feet across from bank to bank,” the paper added. Department of Homeland Security officials, meanwhile, put out a call for new construction in Starr County, Texas.
“As of early August 2023, Border Patrol had encountered over 245,000 such entrants attempting to enter the United States between ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in Fiscal Year 2023,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Majorkas’s office said in a notification published Thursday in the Federal Registry. “There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas pursuant to [federal law].”
That announcement coincided with a high-level meeting between U.S. and Mexican officials in Mexico City, where Mayorkas argued that a border wall is ineffective.
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“There is no new administration policy with respect to the border wall,” he said. “From day one, this administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer. That remains our position, and our position has never wavered. The language in the Federal Register notice is being taken out of context and it does not signify any change in policy whatsoever.”
Mexican Foreign Secretary Alicia Barcena welcomed that statement. “This is not an announcement of yet a new barrier, but it’s part of their allotted budget and therefore they need to process, they need to execute,” she said. “And I understand it will not be done through walls but through technology, but through other types of installations in order to detect and to build roads.”