While the border remains a total disaster, the Biden administration spends about $130,000 per day, nearly $50 million a year, to “do nothing” with former President Donald Trump’s unused border wall materials.
The administration pays private landowners to store 20,000 unused border wall sections at 20 project sites.
Other costs associated with storing the border wall materials included security cameras, electrical and stormwater materials, and overhead lights, Fox News reported.
Republican Senate Armed Forces Committee members sent a letter to assistant secretary of defense for homeland Defense and hemispheric affairs Melissa Dalton detailing the situation.
“Every day, the Department of Defense pays $130,000 to store, maintain, and secure these materials,” the senators wrote.
“Since you were sworn in as the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Homeland Defense and Hemispheric Affairs a year ago, you have allowed the Department to pay over $47 million to store these panels,” they said.
Dalton was asked why the Defense Department did not dispose of the unused materials.
The Defence department is required to remove such materials in coordination with the Defense Logistics Agency to reutilize, resell, or demilitarize military property.
“We assume you are well aware of this capability since the Department used the program to transfer 1,700 border wall panels to the state of Texas early in your tenure,” the senators wrote.
The USACE confirmed President Biden’s administration’s cancelation of the border wall contracts in 2021 “left a variety of excess materials,” and the “total costs to store, maintain, and secure all the materials across all sites is estimated to be approximately $130,000 per day.”
“Some of these materials, including security cameras, overhead lights, and electrical and stormwater materials, are being disposed of in accordance with federal excess material disposal laws and regulations,” the USACE stated.
“Overall, 61% of non-bollard panel materials and 4% of bollard panel materials have been transferred to other government agencies or disposed of through the DLA disposition process. The total value of these materials is estimated at approximately $300 million. However, the cost to the government cannot be finalized until audits are completed and negotiations with contractors are concluded.”
As The Epoch Times noted:
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has so far apprehended 2,999 Chinese nationals who illegally attempted to cross the southern border in the fiscal year 2023, a 719 percent increase over 2022.
Most of the illegal fentanyl in the United States is manufactured in Mexico by cartels and then trafficked into the United States with the support of the Chinese Communist government in Beijing.
According to a report issued by Senate Republicans in 2021, Biden’s attempt to suspend or end border wall construction cost American taxpayers $3 million per day.
On March 9, Sen. Jim Risch (R-Idaho) and several Republican senators introduced a bill that would allow the Biden administration to resume construction of Trump’s border wall to stop the massive influx of illegal immigrants
Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, who is largely to blame for the mess at the border, is facing impeachment charges in the Republican-controlled House over his handling of the crisis.
Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) filed his second article of impeachment against Mayorkas in February, accusing him of exacerbating the crisis.
“This is done intentionally. This is not negligence, it is not by accident, it is not incompetence,” said Biggs, who demanded more efforts to introduce policies to stop the influx of illegal immigrants.
“Secretary Mayorkas is the chief architect of the migration and drug invasion at our southern border. His policies have incentivized more than 5 million illegal aliens to show up at our southern border—an all-time figure,” Biggs said in a prepared statement on February 1.
READ MORE: Biden Struggles to Pronounce the Name of New National Monument: “I’m Having Trouble” – WATCH
Tell me why that’s not an impeachable offense?
And people will defend this just because their “side” is doing it. I just dont understand why he had to stop the wall building.
That’s the President. such a great job!
Joey is soooooo S.m.a.r.t such a good little Hussein O’Bj appointee
Joe Biden is an ignorant, lying cowardly old man.