The White House announced on Friday that the Pentagon recovered about $ 2.2 billion that former US President Donald Trump diverted to build the wall on the border with Mexico, and asked Congress not to force him to spend 1.4 billion more on the border barrier.
The former president managed to build 52 miles of wall, at an average cost of 46 million dollars per mile . Or what is the same, 25.8 million for each of the 83 kilometers that he managed to build.
In a statement, the White House explained that the Pentagon will dedicate the 2,200 million that the Trump administration diverted to the items to which those funds were originally intended : a total of 66 projects in 11 US states, three territories. and 16 countries.
Of that amount, almost 1,300 million will be dedicated to projects abroad, including some 90 million dollars in facilities of the US Navy in Spain, where the United States has a naval base in Rota (Cádiz) , and more than 33 million in the Guantanamo naval base (Cuba), according to the Pentagon.
Although the administration of President Joe Biden may recover some of the funds diverted by Trump, there are another $ 1.4 billion that the US Congress approved specifically for the border wall for this fiscal year.
The Department of Homeland Security is required by law to use these funds for the purpose designated by Congress, so the White House asked the legislature to “cancel” that item , in order to spend that money on other types of border security measures. , more “modern and efficient” than the wall.
Biden takes the US back to the Paris Agreement and stops the construction of the wall with Mexico
Biden takes the US back to the Paris Agreement and stops the construction of the wall with Mexico
During his four years in power, Trump raised $ 15 billion to replace the border fence and erect new stretches of wall along 727 kilometers (452 miles) of the border, covering more than a quarter of the border. the 3,145 kilometers (1,954 miles) that separate the country from Mexico.
Of those $ 15 billion, about $ 5 billion were approved by Congress specifically for Trump’s flagship project, and another $ 10 billion was diverted from anti-drug and other projects.
Upon leaving power, he had about $ 3.6 billion to spend on the wall, which includes the 2,200 recovered this Friday and the 1,400 tied by Congress to the border project .
On his first day in power, on January 20, Biden signed a decree that ordered an end to the national emergency decreed by Trump to divert funds towards the construction of the wall, and stop works on it.
The Department of Homeland Security announced this Friday, in addition, that after reviewing what to do with a grant that Congress had granted to build the wall, it decided to use those funds to “address urgent environmental and security issues” that resulted from the construction of the barrier in California and the Rio Grande Valley (Texas).
“This is a victory for border communities, for immigrant communities and for our environment. Once again, they will be able to prosper without the threat of a border wall ,” the director of legislation and community policy of the organization Earthjustice, Raúl García.
