What’s Really Behind Biden’s New Border Wall Push? | CLIP | Crossroads

Good evening and welcome to Crossroads. The Biden administration has done a 180 on border security, at least on paper. The Department of Homeland Security issued an alert saying it is now necessary to resume construction of the border wall. It notes that DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas sees the situation as being serious enough that quote, it is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations and other legal requirements in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas. In my personal opinion, this is just a giant show. It is a scam. And I believe this is really about the shakeup that just took place in Congress, which I will explain in just a bit. On the border wall construction, it should not be interpreted as a change in policy by any means. Generally, look, I support building the border wall, but they're only building this wall in one county in Texas. Elsewhere, they're not changing any policies on tearing down or removing barriers or even on fixing broken parts of the wall, which they're not doing. And even if they are sincere about building the wall, even if they built the entire wall, it means nothing without the system of enforcement behind it. The State Department is not removing its funding from the United Nations to ship illegal immigrants here. The NGOs working with them that bust the people all throughout America are not having their funding cut. The amnesty laws, the sanctuary city laws, the construction of actual housing developments for the illegal immigrants, the programs granting them free health care, none of this is changing. The only thing that's changing is the Department of Homeland Security is going to be continuing to build the border wall in one part of Texas. And if you read the public notice on why they're doing it, well, it's actually pretty clear, I'd say. DHS is required to do this by Congress. If DHS is not establishing at least the illusion of border security, it could be deemed in violation of a congressional order. And that's pretty significant right now, I'll explain. Now this is all according to a notice of determination that was posted to the U.S. Federal Registry by the Department of Homeland Security. As it states, this whole order ties to the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigration Responsibility Act, which was, of course, amended many times through history. Under that act, Majorca states in the determination that one of the missions of DHS is border security. And he says, Congress has provided to the Secretary of Homeland Security a number of authorities necessary to cut out DHS, sorry, to carry out DHS's border security mission. Among those authorities is the one cited as the title of this notice. It's at the top. It's Section 102 of the Illegal Immigration Reform Act. So what does Section 102 require in that? Well, this notice says that Congress provided that the Secretary of Homeland Security shall take such actions as may be necessary to install additional physical barriers and roads, including the removal of obstacles to detection of illegal entrance in the vicinity of the United States border to deter illegal crossings in areas of high illegal entry into the United States. Now not only that, but as this notice actually states, Section 102 also calls on DHS to construct reinforced fencing on the southwest border and provide for the installation of additional fencing barriers, roads, lighting cameras, and sensors on the southwest border. Now, as the Department of Homeland Security, have they been doing any of this? Well, no, they have not for the most part. Actually, they've been doing the opposite. Construction of the border wall was frozen. Even recently, the Biden administration, they were auctioning off steel beams from the wall for scrap. In Arizona, where the local government tried bypassing DHS and started building its own wall using shipping containers, the Biden administration ordered them to stop. In Texas, the Biden administration, they were cutting the barbed wire fences and ordered the removal of a water barrier that was meant to play the role that DHS was required by Congress to fulfill and has not fulfilled, of course. And it's not like the DHS doesn't have the power to do something. It's not like the department had its hands tied. No, actually, Secretary Mayorkas actually writes in this official notice, quote, Congress granted to the Secretary of Homeland Security the authority to waive all legal requirements that I, he's saying, in my sole discretion, determine necessary to ensure the expedience construction of barriers and roads authorized by section 102 of the act. Now, if you were to turn on the news, you'll see that Biden, this is what they're saying, at least Biden is waiving 26 federal laws to allow this construction. But if you actually read the notice, you'll see these laws are mainly just on land usage, things like environmental and historical side acts, such as the Clean Air Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act. And they're not doing anything significant by waiving these. Section 102 from Congress already gave them the authority to do that. This is just the narrative most of the media is running with. So what's really going on here? Well, there's a few ways to read this. One is that really what Secretary Mayorkas is saying. He writes that the Rio Grande Valley sector in Texas is deemed an area of high illegal entry. He notes as well that as of August, Border Patrol encountered over 245,000 people trying to illegally enter the United States through the Rio Grande Valley sector. But take that in its full context. And you'll know that last month alone, there were 260,000 encounters across the border. So yes, the Rio Grande is a problem, but so is the rest of the border. There were more people last month than there was in the entire year, in other words. So why is Mayorkas only resuming border wall construction in Starr County, Texas? Well, to be fair, this is just the start. But for now, this is the only place that we're being told about that they're building this. And let's look back at this. The year 2020, during his campaign for president, Biden vowed that under his administration, there would never be another foot of wall constructed. Biden campaigned on build that wall. Are you willing to tear that wall down? No, there will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration. Now three years later, it's happening. President Joe Biden was actually questioned recently about this decision. He explained that money for the wall was already allocated. He says he tried moving the money elsewhere, but he couldn't. So it seems that this is more in Mayorkas' hands. Watch. I'll answer one question on the border wall. The border wall, the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get them to reappropriate, to redirect that money. They didn't. They wouldn't. And in the meantime, there's nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what was appropriate. I can't stop them.