Paul Gosar: Joe Biden ‘Recklessly’ Wasting Taxpayer Money by Halting Border Wall Construction

In a photo taken on March 28, 2021 ranch owner Tony Sandoval (67) stands before a portion
ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images

President Joe Biden is violating federal directives imposed by Congress by halting construction of border wall along the United States-Mexico border, Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) says.

One of Biden’s first executive orders halted construction of the border wall which was funded by the Trump administration in an effort to help reduce illegal immigration.
This month, reports circulated the Biden administration is considering restarting border wall construction to fill in “gaps” in the barrier. The southern border is nearly 2,000-miles long — the majority of which has little-to-no border wall.

In a letter to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), which is investigating whether Biden illegally ordered a halt to construction, Gosar writes Biden did violate federal directives via Congress because the funding is already allocated to the infrastructure project.

“In my view, the Biden administration is in violation of congressional directives to build the border wall,” Gosar writes to GAO officials:

Mr. Biden, by order, stopped all construction and ordered the federal subcontractors to cease and desist. This reckless maneuver prevented contractors from demobilizing in an orderly fashion, thus wasting taxpayer dollars. My constituents and the greater American public do not deserve for their hard-earned incomes to be wasted by virtue of bureaucratic failure.

The wall panel segments, which idly lay in stacks due to the haphazard order, are expensive government property paid for by taxpayers. The wall itself is estimated to cost $20 million per mile.

These unused border materials are not only an ineffecient and purposeless waste of taxpayer dollars, but are directly contributing to an avoidable border crisis which current Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas recently disclosed as the worst the situation has been in 20 years. Therefore, I encourage the GAO to review this matter and make arrangements to inventory the segment and assign security details to proect these federal assets.

The full letter can be read here:

Gosar Letter to GAO by John Binder

Biden’s decision to halt construction cost American taxpayers about $6 million a day, an exclusive Breitbart News report revealed. About $1.4 billion in funding for the border wall was allocated by Congress last year.

Former Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Director Mark Morgan said Biden’s halt to construction killed about 5,000 construction jobs as well as other jobs in the steel, concrete, and technology industries.

As Biden halted border wall construction, illegal immigration skyrocketed at the U.S.-Mexico border.

In March, federal immigration officials apprehended nearly 170,000 border crossers including more than 18,600 UACs, nearly 53,000 family units, and nearly 97,000 single adults. The surge in illegal immigration under Biden marks a 72 percent increase in a single month and 243 percent increased compared to March 2020.

Breitbart News exclusively reported about 155,000 illegal aliens have successfully crossed into the U.S. since October 2020 — roughly 1,500 “got-aways” every day.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jbinder@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter here

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