There's a crisis on the U.S.-Mexico border. Holding facilities are overcrowded with unaccompanied minors and over 100,000 illegal immigrants are expected to be apprehended in March. Former Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf predicts it will be "much north" of 100,000.
Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) is one of several Washington lawmakers who took a trip to see the crisis for himself. His fears were unfortunately confirmed. By all angles, it appears that President Biden has done a 180 on the progress his predecessor had achieved.
"He halted the wall construction the first day he was in office and said, 'just wherever it is, just stop it at that point,'" Lankford said of Biden.
"It is worse than I thought actually," he said.
The senator explained that on his tour in Tucson, he observed that maintenance gates have not been installed, meaning that there's miles of fencing with gaps every few miles. Gaps "big enough to drive through," he explained, making the structure "worthless."
I went to Arizona to see the impact of President Biden’s rash decision to end border wall construction & it was worse than I thought. His decision left gaps in the wall that make it useless. The wall would’ve been completed in a matter of weeks-- the material is there & paid for. pic.twitter.com/c7Ndq9Osce
— Sen. James Lankford (@SenatorLankford) March 23, 2021
If Biden would have allowed the construction to continue for another couple of weeks, it would have been closed and secure, Lankford said. The materials they need are all there on the ground. They have the money, and the contractors have been paid. It's time to finish the job.
While the wall was not a "silver bullet" to solving the immigration crisis, Lankford said that every border agent he spoke with agreed it at least helped to slow the problem.
"We need to go ahead and finish that," Lankford said.
As Leah reported this morning, the Government Accountability Office is reportedly investigating Biden over his border wall freeze.