Faced with the border wall with Mexico, former President Donald Trump’s flagship measure, the Biden administration will make its contribution. Homeland Security Minister Alejandro Mayorkas said a new portion would be built in the Rio Grande Valley, an area that experiences a “large number of illegal entries” on the border between the two countries.
“There is currently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads near the United States border to prevent illegal entry,” he said in an official notice published by the Federal Register the United States.
The information has been widely commented on and described as an about-face, Joe Biden having affirmed on the day he took office in January 2021 that the taxpayer would no longer pay for the construction of a wall at the border, and that a wall “massive” was not “a serious political solution”. In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador immediately judged that these were “steps backwards”.
Immigration, a growing political problem for Joe Biden
Joe Biden, candidate for re-election, had to explain himself on Thursday, ensuring that he “could not interrupt” the financing committed by his predecessor Donald Trump for the construction of the wall. “The money was intended for the border wall. I tried to convince (Republicans in Congress) to allocate the funds to something else, to redirect them. They didn’t want to,” he said. “In the meantime, it is not legally possible to use this money for anything other than what it was intended for,” he continued, while assuring that “no”, he did not believe that building walls was a solution to the migration crisis.
Donald Trump, rival of Joe Biden and favorite of the right for the next presidential election, did not fail to react. The Biden administration’s announcement shows that “I was right when I built 900 km (…) of a beautiful, brand new border wall,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform. Illegal immigration is a growing political problem for Joe Biden, candidate for re-election in 2024 and overwhelmed by Republicans who accuse him of laxity.