Biden administration waives 26 laws to build US-Mexico border wall in Texas

​​​​​​​By Darren Lyn

HOUSTON, United States (AA) - The Biden administration announced the waiver of 26 federal laws to build a wall at the US-Mexico border in the state of Texas.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) made the announcement of the nearly 20 miles (32 kilometers) of construction in the Rio Grande Valley late Wednesday, saying the area has seen an influx of nearly 250,000 immigrants in the past two months.

"The United States Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector is an area of 'high illegal entry,'" Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement. "As of early August 2023, Border Patrol had encountered over 245,000 such entrants attempting to enter the United States between ports of entry in the Rio Grande Valley."

The federal government will also be constructing additional reinforced fencing, barriers, roads, lighting, cameras and sensors at the southwest border. Some of the laws being waived concern endangered species, federal water pollution control, clean air and safe drinking water.

"It is necessary to waive certain laws, regulations, and other legal requirements in order to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border," said Mayorkas.

The construction, which was announced in June, marks a 180-degree turn in policy for President Joe Biden, who pledged during the 2020 presidential campaign that not "another foot of wall" would be constructed. But the increased traffic of illegal immigrants from Mexico through the state of Texas has prompted his administration to take action.

"There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States," said Mayorkas.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has shown disdain for Biden's immigration policies by busing thousands of migrants to Democratic asylum cities including New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

Even Democratic governors like J.B. Pritzker of Illinois have said the federal government needs to intervene to get the immigration problem under control.

"On top of the 15,000 that have arrived in Chicago and Illinois over the last 13 months, we are now seeing busloads more migrants at increasingly higher rates being sent specifically to Chicago each day," he wrote in a letter to the president.

"There is much more that can and must be done on a federal level to address a national humanitarian crisis that is currently being shouldered by state and local governments without support," he added.