(TheRedWire.com) – On Wednesday, the Biden administration announced that to move forward with constructing a border wall along the Southern Border in Texas; there would be a total of 26 federal laws that would be waived. This is the first time that the current administration will be using an executive power that former President Donald Trump had frequently employed to divert funds to construct the border wall.
The laws in question are expected to assist in allowing the construction in Starr County, Texas, to move forward. According to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the move is in response to the high number of illegal entries into the country.
According to the U.S. Border Patrol statistics from August, which the DHS cited, there were over 245,000 encounters along the Rio Grande Valley Sector of people attempting to cross into the United States within the last fiscal year.
Alejandro Mayorkas, the DHS secretary, pointed out in a statement that there was an “immediate need” to build a wall that would block people from illegally entering the United States through these high-movement areas.
Some federal laws being waived for wall construction include the Endangered Species Act, the Safe Water Drinking Act, and the Clean Water Act.
The funding for the border construction will come from a congressional appropriation passed through Congress in 2019 and set aside funding to be used for building a wall along the Rio Grande Valley.
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