(DailyAnswer.org) – President Joe Biden has been ordered by a federal judge to continue building the border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border using funds allocated under former President Donald Trump.
Texas District Judge Drew Tipton issued the preliminary injunction in early March 2024 that ordered the Biden administration to cease diverting funds away from the construction of the border wall. In 2019, Congress approved the allocation of billions in funds to construct the wall on the southern border, only for Biden to stop all construction on his first day of office. Texas and Missouri then sued the president for failing to invest the funds in further construction of the border wall.
In October 2023, the Biden administration announced that it was using executive power to allow the construction of the border wall in Texas. The move angered environmentalists and advocates for migrants, as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that the department would waive several laws, including the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. Environmentalists argued that the structures would run through public lands and ecosystems that house endangered plants and animals, such as a spotted wild cat and the ocelot.
Laiken Jordahl, a southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, warned that extending the wall would “bulldoze” through the center of the species’ habitat and cut off wildlife migration routes. Democratic Texas Representative Henry Cuellar called the border wall a “14th-century solution” to a modern problem and said he stood against the waste of tax dollars on building an ineffective wall.
Judge Tipton also ruled in March 2024 to uphold humanitarian plans to let 30,000 migrants from four countries into the U.S. each month, dismissing a challenge by Republican-led states. In his ruling, Tipton questioned whether Texas could claim financial losses if the parole program actually reduced the amount of migrants entering the country.
Tipton’s ruling restrains Biden’s government and its employees from implementing the president’s 2022 amended plan. It prohibits the diversion of the funds for any purposes other than the construction of physical walls and barriers. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton celebrated in a statement that the state of Texas prevailed over Biden’s “desperation for open borders at any cost.” Dale Wilcox from the Immigration Reform Law Institute accused Biden of being “at war” with the country’s immigration laws.
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