As Joe Biden prepares to take office, activists say the president-elect must not only take meaningful action to stabilize the US-Mexico border, but also reckon with his own history of militarizing the border landscape and communities.
Biden has promised to end many of the Trump administration’s border policies, but has yet to unveil the kind of bold immigration plan that would suggest a true departure from Obama-era priorities. Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s top immigration adviser who memorably defended the administration’s decision to deport hundreds of thousands of immigrants, was recently added to Biden’s transition team.
Biden has stated that he will cease construction of the border wall, telling National Public Radio in August that there will be “not another foot of wall”, and that his administration will close lawsuits aimed at confiscating land to make way for construction. His immigration plan will also rescind Trump’s declaration of a “national emergency” on the southern border, which the Trump administration has used to siphon funds from the Department of Defense to finance construction, circumventing Congress in an action recently declared illegal by an appeals court.
Some lawmakers along the border find these developments heartening, after Trump’s border wall construction has devastated sensitive ecosystems, tribal spaces, and communities, and has been continuously challenged in court.
“I very much expect a Biden administration to cancel construction contracts and instruct DoJ to close eminent domain lawsuits,” says the congressman Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who represents the south Texas district of Laredo, where plans for construction have been met with stiff resistance from locals who say it is unnecessary and would damage their community. “My constituents feel hopeful, because they know a Biden administration is not going to waste money on a useless, destructive wall.”
Since January 2017, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) say they have spent $15bn on “400 miles of new primary and secondary border wall system”, the vast majority of it financed by funds from the Department of Defense. Most of this consists of replacing or building on older barriers, not building on land where none existed before.
But while weary border activists see a potential ally in the Biden administration, many say that, while his electoral victory brought them a sense of relief, they are hoping for more than a return to the status quo.
“Stopping construction isn’t enough,” says Dror Ladin, a senior staff attorney with the ACLU National Security Project. “There has to be planning to dismantle particularly harmful sections of this wall in a responsible way and help heal the damage that has been done, both to communities and natural spaces.”
Donald Trump is not unique in his goal of militarizing the border, but his administration has tested the limits of executive authority in ways his predecessors did not. On 25 to 30 occasions, the Trump administration has invoked an obscure provision of the 2005 Real ID Act, which allows the secretary of homeland security to continue barrier construction without paying heed to any law that would stand in the way of expeditious construction efforts. The Trump administration has used it to bypass protections like the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act. By comparison, the George Bush administration invoked the provision to waive laws five times.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
