With Border Wall Construction Finally On Hold, Activists Worry About What’s Next

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A reinforced section of the U.S.-Mexico border fencing seen in eastern Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico on Jan. 20. President Biden signed an executive action and has halted construction of the massive wall for 60 days.

Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images

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Guillermo Arias/AFP via Getty Images

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Trump’s Border Wall Builders Carry On Even Though Projects May Never Be Completed

The government reportedly could save about $2.6 billion if construction doesn’t resume. But terminating contracts early also means paying tens of millions in cancellation fees.

Biden’s Homeland Security Department and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer confirmed to NPR that every wall construction project has been suspended from San Diego to the Rio Grande Valley – the executive order Biden signed the day he took office gave officials seven days to do so. When asked about next steps, DHS referred NPR to the White House.

According to Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Laredo Democrat, DHS is willing to cancel the wall but continue other planned security installations. He has nearly 200 border miles in his district and says he was in touch with the department last week.

«I don’t like the wall. But we’ve got to use other things — cameras, technology, drones and all that,» Cuellar said. «I understand some people don’t want anything. They don’t want cameras; they don’t want lights, they don’t want underground sensors. And I’m sorry, but we have a responsibility to secure the border.»

Working 24/7 — racing the clock until Inauguration Day — crews had been dynamiting mountainsides in Arizona to make way for sections of wall that would likely never get built.

Contractors have fenced off more than half of Arizona’s border with Mexico in the environmentally sensitive Sonoran Desert.

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U.S. Workers build the new 13-mile border wall construction project in the desert between Sunlad Park, N.M., and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico on Jan. 15.

Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images

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U.S. Workers build the new 13-mile border wall construction project in the desert between Sunlad Park, N.M., and Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico on Jan. 15.

Herika Martinez/AFP via Getty Images

Gary Nabhan, a longtime ecologist and writer in Southern Arizona, says in just one protected wilderness, Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument, the wall blocked 52 wildlife corridors where animals are known to cross in search of food and water.

For activists like Nabhan, their energies now turn to restoration.

They’re calling on the administration «to take down the wall in the critical corridors for wildlife that are usually watered places rivers and oases,» Nabhan said. «It’s going to take a herculean effort to undo the damage.»

Most landowners on the Rio Grande never wanted a giant security fence to begin with. Property owners opposed to the wall have long maintained that Customs and Border Protection, which is part of DHS, could substitute technology for steel and concrete.

Beto Cardenas, a lawyer for Sacred Heart Children’s Home, an orphanage in Laredo whose property was in the path of the barrier, said, «Obviously, given the fact that there’s been a pause, we would hope that the Biden administration would see that there isn’t a need for a physical barrier.»

Cardenas, who has worked on Capitol Hill as an immigration expert, says unspent funds may be redirected to a different kind of border security, such as hi-tech autonomous surveillance towers.

«I would expect that there would be an investment in all sorts of other personnel, infrastructure and technology, the measures necessary to protect the southwestern border,» Cardenas said.

But even that would run into opposition from activists like Tricia Cortez, with the No Border Wall coalition in Laredo.

«We don’t want the direction to move from a physical wall to a virtual wall and continue down this path of militarizing the border,» she said.

• environmentalists
• biden administration
• border wall
• biden
• border security