In El Paso, Texas, May 11, 2023 (AFP / Patrick T. Fallon)
Joe Biden, accused by the right of laxity towards the arrival of migrants, asserted on Thursday that he is legally obliged to continue building the wall with Mexico, a flagship measure of his predecessor Donald Trump.
The 80-year-old Democrat, a candidate for re-election, said he “cannot interrupt” the funding pledged by the Republican billionaire because he has failed to persuade Congress to use those funds for other measures.
That same day, the White House announced the resumption of direct deportation flights to Venezuela for illegal immigrants that had been paused for years.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that a new section of the wall would be built in the Rio Grande Valley on the border with Mexico.
“There is currently an acute and immediate need to erect physical barriers … to prevent illegal entries,” the minister said in an official notice from the Federal Register.
This led to accusations of a U-turn by Joe Biden, who promised on the day he took office in January 2021 that taxpayers would no longer pay to build a wall.
The minister then asserted on social networking: “We have always made it clear that a wall is not a solution.”
In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel Lopez Obrador, who met the head of American diplomacy Antony Blinken on Thursday, judged that it was a “step backwards”.
– “Absolutely wrong” –
“The money was intended for the border wall. I tried to convince (Congressional Republicans) to use the funds for something else, to redirect them. “They didn’t want that,” defended Joe Biden.
US President Joe Biden in the White House, October 5, 2023 in Washington (AFP / Brendan Smialowski)
“In the meantime, it is not legally possible to use this money for anything other than what it was intended for,” the Democrat continued, justifying a decision that was heavily criticized by some elected officials in his party, particularly on the left wing.
The American president, who is regularly accused by Republicans of laxity in the face of the migration crisis, assured: “No,” he does not believe that building walls is a solution.
“We apply the law,” emphasized their spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre.
Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s rival and the right’s favorite for the next presidential election, did not miss the opportunity to react.
This announcement shows that “I was right when I built 900 km (…) of beautiful, brand new border wall,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
The funding for building the wall comes from an appropriation that Congress approved for that purpose in 2019, when Donald Trump was in office.
– angle of attack –
Republicans have made immigration one of their favorite points of attack against the White House. The right wing of the party, for example, opposes releasing additional funds to Ukraine and believes that these funds should instead be used to combat the migration crisis.
Workers replace old border barriers on the American side, September 28, 2023 in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico (AFP / Guillermo Arias)
Conservative Senator Lindsey Graham called for the two issues to be linked, while the American Congress must vote on a new budget and thus a possible extension for Ukraine before November 17th, otherwise the federal government could be paralyzed.
The White House resisted using the construction of the wall to negotiate Republican lawmakers’ support for a new financial effort to benefit Ukrainians: “I wouldn’t make the connection between the two,” said Karine Jean-Pierre.
As for Venezuela, in the coming days the Biden administration will resume direct deportations by air, which have been suspended for years due to the very deteriorated security situation in that country.
Venezuelans are one of the most represented nationalities among migrants who regularly arrive at the southern border of the United States.