People of all parties all across the country have been noticing and being alarmed by the results of the Biden border crisis. Now, however, is it possible that someone else may have caught on to the problem? That would be the Big Guy himself. It’s being reported that the Biden administration has allocated $950 million for “remediation work and system attribute installation” at four portions of the border. That’s government-speak for repairs and upgrades. And this comes on the heels of an announcement about a completely new section of the wall being erected in Texas. So is this a sign that there is an actual policy change taking place and Biden has realized what a disaster this has been? Or is it just that his staff has noticed what a beating the boss is taking in the polls on this issue? My money would be on the latter. (NY Post)
President Biden famously promised not to build “another foot” of border wall during his presidency, but he’s willing to spend $950 million on upkeep of the existing infrastructure.
The Biden administration — which reversed course last month and announced it will build a new section of wall in Texas — allocated the money to repair and upgrade existing border walls in the Lone Star State, California and Arizona, according to a court filing.
Customs and Border Protection reported that four separate contracts have been awarded for “remediation work and system attribute installation” at sites in Tucson, San Diego, El Paso and El Centro.
We shouldn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, as the saying goes. Every bit of additional barrier on the border decreases the amount of area that CBP has to cover and allows them to reallocate resources. This money will also go toward more than just the wall itself. The order includes the construction of roads along the border as well as the installation of high-tech cameras and other “detection technology” that will help identify migrants and cartel operators.
The Biden team is still trying to write this off as money that was previously allocated that they “can’t spend on anything else.” But that didn’t stop them from ignoring those allocations for almost three years. As we’ve pointed out here previously, this $950 million isn’t nearly enough. If we had focused a third of the cash we’ve sent to Ukraine on border security we could have finished the wall entirely by now. But the will has not existed to do so.
I absolutely refuse to believe that Joe Biden or whoever is pulling his strings this week has suddenly “seen the light” and decided to do the right thing. The White House is in a panic over Biden’s plunging poll numbers and members of his own party are in open revolt over the crisis that a flood of migrants is causing in blue cities and states across the country. These tentative efforts at border security are an attempt at solving a political problem, not the real-world crisis that Biden’s policies created.
Unfortunately, while any improvement is better than nothing, there is still far too much of the border that remains accessible. The human traffickers and random asylum seekers will find somewhere else where they are able to walk across and word will spread quickly. Nothing will deter the masses until the rest of the world begins to believe that people can no longer simply show up uninvited and present themselves as asylum-seekers without repercussions. If all of Joe Biden’s migrant planes started heading out of the country instead of toward the cities of the migrants’ choices, then the message might start sinking in. But I don’t expect that to happen anytime soon.