President Joe Biden just made good on another campaign promise.
President Joe Biden on Thursday revoked the emergency declaration used by Donald Trump to funnel money to the construction of his wall on the border between the United States and Mexico.
The revocation of the emergency declaration officially stops construction of the wall, making good on a promise Biden made on the campaign trail.
"I have determined that the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border was unwarranted," Biden wrote in a letter sent to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. "I have also announced that it shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall, and that I am directing a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to that end."
Trump declared the emergency on the southern border in February 2019 after Congress refused to give him the money he demanded to build the wall — even though he had said numerous times that Mexico would be paying for it.
The emergency declaration allowed Trump to divert funds Congress had appropriated to other areas.
Congress voted more than once to pass a resolution blocking Trump from using his emergency powers to bypass the legislative process, but Trump vetoed it. Neither the House nor the Senate had enough Republican support to override the veto.
In the end, Trump built 452 miles of border wall in four years, but just 80 miles of that was new wall where none had previously existed.
During his campaign for president in 2020, Biden said he would stop the costly project, which experts said did not make the country safer or stop undocumented immigrants from coming to the United States.
"There will not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration, No. 1," Biden told NPR in August. "I'm going to make sure that we have border protection, but it's going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it. And at the ports of entry — that's where all the bad stuff is happening."
Published with permission of The American Independent Foundation.
