The Biden administration and a top Democrat in Congress are moving to repurpose billions of dollars for the Trump administration’s border wall to other means of achieving the same goal of deterring illegal migration.
House Appropriations Vice Chairman Henry Cuellar, a centrist Democrat who represents a district that includes 200 miles of the Texas-Mexico border, has spent weeks trying to negotiate a deal between lawmakers of both parties, federal law enforcement on the border, and President Biden’s political appointees.
Cuellar, who’s represented the border district since 2005, has experience negotiating for border security among residents, federal law enforcement, and both governments. He has long opposed any type of physical barrier dividing the United States and Mexico of the kind that former President Donald Trump made the key plank of his 2016 platform.
The Trump administration acquired $15.5 billion for nearly 800 miles of border wall projects, which included the 30-foot steel barrier, lighting, roads, ground sensors, and other technology. Biden halted construction of the wall on Jan. 20, just as 450 miles was completed. The construction process was suspended for 60 days as the government determines how to “redirect funding and repurpose contracts” for the remaining 300 miles worth of wall system that was funded.
In the meantime, Cuellar is in backdoor talks with the Biden administration and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the federal agency that manages the nation’s borders, to reach an agreement on how the remainder of the money will be spent.
The more than 300 miles of wall that was not completed was funded through multiple appropriations bills, as well as money that the Trump administration took from the Treasury and Defense departments on the basis that the southern border was in a national emergency and urgently needed a wall. Congress gave the Department of Homeland Security more than $4 billion for a border wall system across Trump’s four years in office. It is not clear how much of that is unused, though a House Republican aide said the $1.375 billion allocated for fiscal year 2021 is 100% unspent. In addition, Trump took $10 billion from the Pentagon and Treasury.
House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security ranking member Chuck Fleischmann insisted that the remainder of the $4 billion from Congress should go toward the wall because that was what Congress agreed to spend it on, unlike the Defense and Treasury money that Trump redirected without the permission of lawmakers.
One challenge in negotiating how to spend the remaining funds is that few Biden officials have arrived at DHS headquarters and CBP and Border Patrol are without permanent leaders, but the border wall review process is only 60 days long. Cuellar spoke with officials from the department, agency, and administration, including a DHS undersecretary who has met with Border Patrol leaders on the southern border, and said they were all “on the same page” about how to proceed despite the anticipated pushback from Republicans on any changes.
“What they’re telling me [is] everything they wanted except for the wall,” Cuellar said, listing autonomous cameras, underground fiber optic sensors, technology, roads, and the eradication of the overgrown cane along the Rio Grande River that makes it impossible for Border Patrol agents to see even several feet in front of them.
Despite his strong opposition to a barrier, he strongly supports all other security measures and tools.
“[Border residents] don’t want lights because they said they’re harsh. I disagree with them. They don’t want underground sensors because it disrupts the ground. I disagree with them. They don’t want cameras because they think it’s invasive. They don’t want aerostats because they think it affects the privacy. I disagree with that,” said Cuellar. “We’ve got to have border security, except for the fence.”
Appropriators will make their recommendation on how to spend the untapped wall funds in a matter of weeks, according to Cuellar. First, appropriators must legally redefine “border infrastructure” as it was outlined in the two previous years’ budgets in a way that means cameras, sensors, technology, roads, lighting, and personnel but not a physical barrier. That change then allows DHS to be able to spend it on non-wall items.
“We take that that ‘border infrastructure’ could be technology, could be a fence, but it could be technology and roads, all that stuff. [DHS is] saying they want a definition. So I have a draft of what I think the definition should be,” he said.
Fleischmann indicated that Republicans are not planning to go along with Democrats’ push to spend congressional funds on anything but the wall.
“After very laborious, meticulous negotiations, we agreed on that number for wall construction,” said Fleischmann. “So there will be a dispute over that.”
“Those other two — it becomes more nebulous,” Fleischmann said about Biden’s desire to reallocate diverted Defense and Treasury funds back to the departments, making it harder for Republicans to fight.
CBP said that “the review directed by the presidential proclamation of Jan. 20 is ongoing.”
