Borders: Biden resumes construction of Trump’s wall, claiming that he was forced to do so – 06/10/2023 at 00:40

Joe Biden, who is accused by the right of being lenient in the face of incoming migrants, confirmed on Thursday that he is legally obligated to continue building a wall with Mexico, which is the main measure taken by his predecessor, Donald Trump.

The 80-year-old Democrat, who is running for re-election, said he “cannot cut” the funding pledged by the Republican billionaire, because he was unable to convince Congress to use this money for other measures.

On the same day, the White House announced the resumption of direct deportation flights to Venezuela for illegal immigrants, which had been halted for years.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas indicated that a new section of the wall will be constructed in the Rio Grande Valley, on the border with Mexico.

“There currently exists an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers… to prevent illegal entry,” the secretary said in an official memorandum published by the US Federal Register.

This led to Joe Biden being accused of changing his position, as he had promised on the day he took office, in January 2021, that taxpayers would no longer pay for the costs of building the wall.

The Minister then emphasized the limits of the social network: We have always made it clear that a wall is not a solution.

In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who met with the head of US diplomacy, Anthony Blinken, on Thursday, considered it a “step backwards.”

– ‘Completely false’ –

Joe Biden defended this, saying: “The money was for the border wall. I tried to get (Congressional Republicans) to allocate the money to something else, to redirect it. They didn’t want that.”

The Democrat continued, in justifying a decision that was strongly criticized by some elected officials in his party, especially in the left wing, “In the meantime, it is not legally possible to use these funds for anything other than what was intended for them.”

The US President, who is regularly accused by Republicans of being lax in the face of the immigration crisis, stressed that he does not believe that building walls is the solution.

Her spokeswoman, Karine Jean-Pierre, confirmed: “We are applying the law.”

Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s rival and the right’s favorite in the upcoming presidential elections, did not hesitate to respond.

This ad shows that “I was right to build 900 kilometers (…) of a beautiful new border wall,” he wrote on his platform, Truth Social.

The money for the wall comes from an appropriation approved by Congress for this specific purpose in 2019, when Donald Trump was in office.

-Angle of attack-

Republicans have made immigration one of their favorite angles of attack against the White House. For example, the party’s right wing opposes releasing additional funds to Ukraine, believing that these funds should instead be used to fight the migration crisis.

Conservative Senator Lindsey Graham asked to link the two issues, while the US Congress must vote on a new budget, and thus on a possible extension for Ukraine, before November 17, at the risk of paralyzing the federal state.

The White House has defended itself from using wall construction to compromise Republican lawmakers’ support for a new financial effort on behalf of the Ukrainians: “I’m not going to connect the two,” Karine Jean-Pierre said.

Regarding Venezuela, the Biden administration will resume direct expulsions by plane in the coming days, which have been suspended for years due to the extremely deteriorating security situation in this country.

Venezuelans are one of the most represented nationalities among migrants who regularly arrive at the southern border of the United States.