Joe Biden, rightly accused of laxity in the face of arriving migrants, assured on Thursday that he is legally obligated to continue building a wall with Mexico, a flagship measure of his predecessor Donald Trump.
The 80-year-old Democrat, up for re-election, said he “cannot cut short” the funding promised by the Republican billionaire because he has failed to convince Congress to use the funds for other measures.
On the same day, the White House announced the resumption of direct flights to deport illegal immigrants to Venezuela, which had been disrupted for years. The US Border Patrol has officially recorded 1.8 million migrants crossing its southern border between October 2022 and August 2023.
About the face
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said a new part of the wall will be built in the Rio Grande Valley, on the border with Mexico. “There is now a dire and urgent need to construct physical barriers (…) to prevent illegal entry,” the minister said in a legal notice published in the US Federal Register.
This led to Joe Biden being accused of a U-turn, who promised on the day he took office, in January 2021, that the taxpayer would no longer pay for the wall.
The minister then assured the border on social media. We have always made it clear that a wall is not the solution. »
In Mexico, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who meets US diplomatic chief Antony Blinken on Thursday, considered it a “step backwards”.
‘I was right,’ Trump says
“The money was for the border wall. I tried to convinceRepublicans in Congress) direct funds to something else, redirect them. They didn’t want to,” Joe Biden defended himself.
“In the meantime, it is legally impossible to use this money for anything other than what it was intended for,” the Democrat continued, justifying a decision that has been sharply criticized by some elected officials in his party, particularly on the left. .
The American president, who is regularly accused by Republicans of laxity in the face of the migrant crisis, assured: “No,” he does not believe that building walls is the solution. “We apply the law,” insisted its spokesman Karine Jean-Pierre.
Donald Trump, Joe Biden’s rival and right-wing favorite in the next presidential election, did not fail to respond. This ad shows that “I was right to build 900 km (…) of a beautiful, new border wall,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Funds for the wall come from appropriations Congress approved for that specific purpose in 2019 while Donald Trump was in office.
Help to Ukraine
Republicans have made immigration one of their favorite areas of attack against the White House. The right wing of the party, for example, opposes the allocation of additional funds for Ukraine, believing that the money should instead be used to combat the migration crisis.
Conservative Senator Lindsey Graham asked that these two topics be linked, while the US Congress must vote on a new budget, and therefore a possible extension for Ukraine, before November 17, on pain of paralysis of the state federal government.
The White House has defended against using the wall to win Republican support for new financial efforts for Ukrainians: “I wouldn’t link the two,” Karine Jean-Pierre said.
As for Venezuela, the Biden administration will in the coming days resume direct expulsions by air, suspended for several years due to the very deteriorating security situation in that country.
Venezuelans are one of the most overrepresented nationalities among migrants regularly arriving at the U.S. southern border.
Source: Le Parisien
I am Jack Morton and I work in 24 News Recorder. I mostly cover world news and I have also authored 24 news recorder. I find this work highly interesting and it allows me to keep up with current events happening around the world.
