Feb. 11 (UPI) — President Joe Biden on Thursday formally ended a national emergency declaration on the United States’ southern border that allowed mature President Donald Trump two years ago to divert federal funds to acquire his border wall.
Biden acknowledged in a letter to Vice President Kamala Harris and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi that Trump’s invocation of the National Emergencies Act to acquire border wall funding used to be “unwarranted.”
“I maintain moreover presented that it will be the policy of my administration that no extra American taxpayer dollars be diverted to execute a border wall, and that I am directing a cautious evaluate of all sources appropriated or redirected to that discontinue,” Biden acknowledged within the letter.
Supreme month, Biden had signed an govt exclaim stopping the construction of the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. The departments of Defense and Net net page online of birth Safety adopted thru by ending the work.
Republicans in Congress answered by asking the Net net page online of birth Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for all communications associated to Biden’s Jan. 20 govt exclaim.
“This maybe terrible motion not simplest harms our national security and thwarts the necessity of Congress, however moreover leaves American voters residing shut to the southwest border at risk of activities piquant cartels and smugglers,” acknowledged a Feb. 4 letter sent by Net. James Comer, R-Tenn., the ranking member on the House oversight committee.
The American Civil Liberties Union acknowledged it welcomed the tip of the emergency declaration, however acknowledged “it is a ways from adequate.”
“We now need audacious motion from the Biden administration to shield border communities and flow down this wall,” the group acknowledged Thursday.
The border wall used to be one among the hallmarks of Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, announcing on the time that Mexico would pay for constructing the structure, however that by no technique got right here to budge. The Trump administration started fresh construction of the border wall after he took discipline of work in 2017.
Beneath Trump’s emergency declaration in February 2019, he used to be in a position to divert $600 million from the Treasury Department and $6.1 billion from the Defense Department to the Department of Net net page online of birth Safety for border wall construction.
Total, the Trump administration built approximately 450 miles of the wall — most of which used to be the reinforcement or replacement of present barriers — along the 1,954-mile southern border.
