President Joe Biden was criticized by Republicans on social media Friday after information emerged that his administration had accepted development that might fill gaps within the incomplete border wall close to Yuma, Arizona.
Construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall started throughout former President Donald Trump’s administration, however Biden rapidly ordered a pause after he took workplace in 2021. On Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) introduced that Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had licensed U.S. Customs and Border Protection to shut 4 gaps in a border barrier undertaking close to the Morelos Dam within the U.S. Border Patrol’s Yuma Sector.
The tasks are supposed to “address operational impacts, as well as immediate life and safety risks, and will be funded with DHS’s Fiscal Year 2021 appropriations,” the DHS stated in a press launch.
The DHS initially introduced late final 12 months that it deliberate to shut small gaps within the border wall, in addition to make changes to forestall flooding and end earlier development of entry roads, after figuring out that extra work on the undertaking was wanted, CNN reported. The newly licensed development close to Yuma seems to satisfy these plans partly, however Republicans rapidly condemned Biden for the transfer.
“The Biden Administration just quietly approved construction of a border wall near Yuma, AZ,” Ryan Fournier, founding father of Students for Trump, tweeted Friday. “Remember when Biden attacked Trump over the wall? Walls work!”
Patrick T. Fallon/AFP by way of Getty Images
“So the Biden Admin has decided to finish the Trump border wall in Arizona…even after they said walls are racist and walls don’t work,” said the Hodgetwins, a duo of comedians and conservative political commentators made up of dual brothers Keith Hodge and Kevin Hodge.
Newsweek was not instantly capable of finding an occasion the place Biden particularly known as the border wall racist. But earlier than he was elected, he wrote an op-ed for the Miami Herald in 2019 during which he stated: “At a time when the challenges we face demand a united, regional response, Trump repeatedly invokes racist invective to describe anyone south of the Rio Grande, including calling migrants ‘animals.'”
In the op-ed, Biden additionally wrote that it was necessary that the U.S. safe its borders “but ‘build the wall’ is a slogan divorced from reality.
“It will not cease the circulation of unlawful narcotics or human trafficking, each of which come primarily by way of authorized ports of entry,” he continued. “Nor will it cease asylum seekers fleeing essentially the most determined situations possible, and who’ve the proper to have their circumstances heard. Nor will it stem the numbers of undocumented, most of whom over-stay authorized visas.”
Representative Andrew Clyde, a Georgia Republican, said the Biden administration’s construction approval comes at a time of low support for the president among Hispanic voters.
“After Hispanic help for President Biden craters to 26% approval, he all of the sudden desires to finish the border wall,” Clyde tweeted.
His tweet was an obvious reference to a Quinnipiac University ballot, printed in April, which discovered that 26 % of surveyed Hispanic voters accepted of Biden’s job efficiency.
Newsweek reached out to Clyde’s workplace for affirmation that the 26 % he talked about got here from the Quinnipiac survey. The White House was additionally contacted for remark.