The Department of Homeland Security issued two more waivers this week allowing the Army Corps of Engineers to bypass environmental laws and start a nearly $1 billion project to replace roughly 50 miles of border fence in parts of Arizona and Texas that are seeing high levels of illegal activity.
The department announced Friday the new construction projects will go up near El Paso, Texas, and Yuma, Ariz. Two weeks ago, the Army Corps awarded SLSCO $789 million for the El Paso project and Barnard Construction $187 million for the El Paso operation, a Federal Register entry states. The Pentagon is funding both projects.
President Trump campaigned in 2016 to build what he called a “beautiful” wall between the U.S. and Mexico. When he took office in January 2017, the barrier between both countries’ 1,954-mile border covered approximately one-third of that space.
In the two years and three months that he has been in office, the Trump administration has completed less than 40 miles of barrier, the majority of which has been replacement.
Of the Border Patrol’s nine regions, the El Paso and Yuma border sectors affected by this week’s DHS decisions have the second- and third-highest number of families illegally crossing the border, respectively.
El Paso will get 46 miles of steel bollard fence and Yuma will get seven miles of the same replacement fence in areas that have “dilapidated and outdated designs,” according to DHS. Both regions will also see new paved roads installed and improved lighting systems.
DHS justified waiving the environmental and land regulations on the basis that the projects were under authority given to a secretary in the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act of 1996. The IIRIRA states a secretary can waive all legal requirements if a barrier, road, or other infrastructure is immediately needed for national security purposes.
The waiver is the fourth such instance of DHS ploughing ahead with replacement and new wall projects since the fall, and the 12th time any secretary has cited the 1996 law in order to bypass others. The decision is expected to upset environmental groups, though DHS said it “remains committed to environmental stewardship.”
“DHS has been coordinating and consulting, and intends to continue doing so, with other federal and state resource agencies to ensure that impacts to the environment, wildlife, and cultural and historic artifacts are analyzed and minimized, to the greatest extent possible,” the department said in the announcement.
Last October, then-Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen waived regulations for 18 miles of barrier in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas and another project for 11 gates in the region.
Then in February, Nielsen skirted land regulations for 12 miles of a secondary barrier in San Diego, Calif.
[Related: ‘Mother of all caravans’ heads north: 10K migrants due in Mexico City any day]
