Forty Republican senators argue that the Biden administration broke the law in suspending congressionally authorized border wall construction and are asking the Government Accountability Office for its opinion on the matter.
President Biden’s Jan. 20 action pausing the wall’s construction amounts to a “blatant violation of federal law” that “directly contributed” to the current border crisis, the senators said in a letter outlining their case to Comptroller General Gene Dodaro.
“In the weeks that followed, operational control of our southern border was compromised and a humanitarian and national security crisis has ensued,” the letter said.
In his order, Biden directed that the pause applies to wall projects funded by redirected funds and those funded by direct appropriations, a move the senators said infringes on Congress’s “constitutional power of the purse.”
BIDEN HAS NO PLANS TO VISIT THE SOUTHERN BORDER ‘AT THE MOMENT’
Appropriations for former President Donald Trump’s border wall priorities passed in recent Congresses helped to prevent surges in illegal immigration such as those being managed now, the senators said.
“Not coincidentally, and in conjunction with a number of other important immigration policy reforms, the rate of illegal border crossings fell substantially and operational control of the border increased dramatically,” they said.
Biden has rolled back a number of Trump-era immigration policies. He ended the emergency declaration that Trump had made with regard to the southern border, and his administration stopped U.S. Customs and Border Protection from expelling unaccompanied migrant children.
Congressional Republicans have been fiercely critical of the Biden administration’s approach.
“At a time when the president will keep our country closed, when maybe we have hoped for a Fourth of July to get together just with their family, how much spread of COVID is he creating every single day by his policies along this border?” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said in a Monday press conference in El Paso, Texas.
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia, who led the effort on Wednesday’s letter to the GAO, said the border situation “is a result of the president — President Biden and his, not just even signaling, but his statements of ‘Nobody’s going to be turned back.’”
The CRISIS at our southern border is a direct result of this administration’s statements and signaling.
These numbers are unimaginable.
Where is the outrage? pic.twitter.com/wTjgC39wYk
— Shelley Moore Capito (@SenCapito) March 16, 2021
Senate Democratic leadership did not give as grim an assessment of the border in a Tuesday press conference but did discuss the need for action.
“I think we need to deal with this reality at the border,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin said, discussing legislative possibilities. “I said to the administration, ‘Come forward with your plan.’”
Of Biden’s order on the wall, the Republican senators said, “The only lawful justification of for these actions would be if the president: (1) transmits to Congress a special message proposing the deferral of the funds; (2) transmits to Congress a special message proposing the permanent rescission of those funds; or (3) can point to a pragmatic delay responsible for the pause in obligation.”
“The Biden administration has pursued none of these paths,” they wrote.
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The Washington Examiner reached out to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy, as well as Vice Chairman Richard Shelby, who undersigned the Republican letter, about what effect Biden’s actions on border wall funding have on the appropriations process but did not receive a response.
