[News] Border Wall Construction Resumes Under President Joe Biden

[Anti-Imperialist News]

theintercept.com
<https://theintercept.com/2022/09/18/biden-trump-border-wall/>
Border Wall Construction Resumes Under President Joe Biden
Ryan Devereaux - September 18, 2022
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[image: image.png]

*Myles Traphagen didn’t* need a government presentation to tell him that
border wall construction was kicking back up. He saw everything he needed
on a recent visit to the Buenos Aires National Wildlife Refuge and the
Coronado National Forest, near the town of Sasabe in southern Arizona.

As the borderlands coordinator for the Wildlands Network
<https://wildlandsnetwork.org/>, Traphagen had visited the area many times
before. It was among the sites he examined in an extensive report
<https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60b7e4e41506593f7f926fe7/t/62dac5dfd9c0641d832606a0/1658504673488/Borderwall+Restoration+Site+Reports.pdf>
published in July documenting the environmental impact of the border wall
expansion under President Donald Trump — President Joe Biden paused the
construction shortly after his inauguration.

“It’s feeling like it felt during border wall construction with Trump.”

Traphagen spotted a new staging area and water holding tanks under
construction. Fixed to the wall were new signs citing an Arizona
trespassing law. A security guard at the scene told him construction was
resuming. Later, a Border Patrol agent ordered him to leave the area.

“It’s feeling like it felt during border wall construction with Trump,”
Traphagen told The Intercept. “I hadn’t felt that on the border in a year
and a half, and now it’s like, oh, shit, here we go again.”

Six days after Traphagen’s visit, U.S. Customs and Border Protection
confirmed that work on the border wall that began under Trump is revving
back up under Biden. In an online presentation Wednesday, CBP — the largest
division of the Department of Homeland Security and home to the Border
Patrol — detailed plans to address environmental damage brought on by the
former president’s signature campaign promise and confirmed that the wall
will remain a permanent fixture of the Southwest for generations to come.

The resumed operations will range from repairing gates and roads to filling
gaps in the wall that were left following the pause on construction that
Biden initiated in January 2021. The wall’s environmental harms have
been particularly acute in southern Arizona, where CBP used explosives to
blast through large swaths of protected land — including sacred Native
American burial grounds and one-of-a-kind wildlife habitats — in service of
Trump’s most expansive border wall extensions.

Starting next month, contractors will return to the Sonoran Desert in
Arizona to resume work on the wall, senior CBP officials said in a public
webinar. In the months since Biden’s pause began, DHS Secretary Alejandro
Mayorkas approved several so-called remediation projects related to the
border wall. The first plan that CBP presented for public comment was in
the Tucson sector, the Border Patrol’s largest area of operations and site
of Trump’s most dramatic and controversial border wall construction.

*In early 2020,* the press was invited to watch as Border Patrol and
Department of Defense officials blew apart
<https://theintercept.com/2020/02/27/border-wall-construction-organ-pipe-explosion/>
chunks of the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, south of Tucson, to make
way for Trump’s wall. The display followed months of protests
<https://theintercept.com/2019/11/24/arizona-border-wall-native-activists/>,
as the administration tapped into a rare desert aquifer
<https://theintercept.com/2019/10/03/climate-change-migration-militarization-arizona/>
that feeds Quitobaquito Springs, an oasis that the Hia-Ced O’odham people
have held sacred for thousands of years.

Two Hia-Ced O’odham women were later arrested, strip-searched, and held
incommunicado
<https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=&ved=2ahUKEwjJlZ3b5pn6AhXmLkQIHdaKByIQFnoECDcQAQ&url=https%3A%2F%2Ftheintercept.com%2F2020%2F09%2F16%2Findigenous-activists-border-wall-protest%2F&usg=AOvVaw3mI8deeVJAVxh-3ui6TL0Y>
after
praying and protesting at the construction site. Earlier this year, one of
the two women, Amber Ortega, was found not guilty
<https://www.tucsonsentinel.com/local/report/011922_ortega_hearing/native-activist-found-not-guilty-border-protest-after-new-arguments-religious-freedom-defense/>
of the charges after a federal judge ruled that the prosecution violated
her rights under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

The controversial work, which included construction on federally designated
wilderness, was permitted under the Real ID Act. Created in the wake of the
September 11 attacks, the act grants DHS the authority to waive any law,
including bedrock statutes meant to safeguard the environment and areas of
cultural significance, to build border barriers in the name of national
security.

When CBP collected public comment on its proposed plans earlier this year,
the vast majority were focused on Arizona, with most addressing the wall’s
impact on wildlife migration and its exacerbation of flooding dangers.
“Many comments specifically noted impacts to the Mexican gray wolf, jaguar,
Sonoran Desert pronghorn, bighorn sheep, ocelot, javelina, mountain lion,
bear, and other wildlife,” CBP noted in a summary report
<https://www.cbp.gov/sites/default/files/assets/documents/2022-Mar/Stakeholder%20Feedback%20Report%20for%20Tucson%20Barrier%20Remediation%20Plan.pdf>
on its Tucson Sector feedback. “Some commenters suggested removing barrier
and leaving flood gates open to address potential impacts.”

[image: The War on Immigrants]Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on
Immigrants <https://theintercept.com/collections/the-war-on-immigrants/>

In the plans laid out last week, CBP said it would finish drainages and
low-water crossings in southern Arizona and in some cases reengineer border
wall designs to allow for water flow. Two contracts have already been
awarded for work in the state, the agency said, adding that the work in
Arizona would include filling “small gaps” in the border wall that remained
following Biden’s pause. CBP described similar operations along the border
in other states.

When asked if CBP envisioned a day when the barriers might be removed, the
agency said it did not.

“At this point in time,” said Shelly Barnes, the environmental planning
lead for the Border Patrol’s infrastructure portfolio, “there are no
current plans to remove sections of the barrier.”
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