Texas officials, forced to go it alone, have built more than 54 miles of security wall along the international border with Mexico during the Biden administration, the Washington Examiner has learned.
According to a spokesman for the Texas Facilities Commission, 54.2 miles of border wall were built between mid-2021 and December 19.
“Director Novak stated nearly a month ago that the goal was to build 50 miles of the wall by the end of the year…” “That milestone could be reached by Thanksgiving,” a TFC spokesperson said in a statement last month. “The agency reached that milestone two weeks before Thanksgiving and six weeks ahead of schedule.”
The state is now halfway toward its goal of completing at least 100 miles of wall by the end of 2026. According to TFC spokesman Richard Glancey, all projects were funded with $3.1 billion made available during the regular legislative sessions of 2021 and 2022, as well as the fourth special session in 2022. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) is also crowdfunding donations, having raised $55 million to date.
Construction is currently underway in 13 locations across six border counties, including Cameron, Maverick, Starr, Val Verde, Webb, and Zapata.
However, the state is expected to far exceed its 100-mile goal. Texas has already approved easement deals for 65 miles of border-adjacent land, and another 109 miles are in the works but not yet completed.
“Under Operation Lone Star, Texas has allocated more than $11 billion of Texas taxpayer money for border security, deploying thousands of Texas National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers, transporting migrants to self-declared sanctuary cities, installing hundreds of miles of strategic barriers, and building more than 54 miles of our own border wall,” said Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, on that came out Monday. “Because of these historic efforts, Texas has decreased illegal crossings into the state by 87%.”
Abbott announced in June 2021 that the state would build the wall, only five months after President Joe Biden took office.
Over four years, the Trump administration completed 450 miles of the 2,000-mile US-Mexico border, the majority of which was a double barrier or the replacement of shorter barriers. However, the majority of the 450 miles were completed in the three remaining border states: California, Arizona, and New Mexico.
Approximately 300 miles of additional wall were funded but not completed by the time Trump left office.
Biden took office in January 2021 and immediately canceled billions of dollars in border wall projects, including those funded by Congress during the Trump administration as well as those funded with money diverted from defense and treasury coffers.
By March 2021, the number of illegal immigrants apprehended at the southern border had skyrocketed and continued to rise into the spring, prompting Abbott to take unprecedented state action.
Texas has more land on the international border than the other three southern border states. According to federal planning documents from Trump-era wall projects and information provided by US Customs and Border Protection, the Texas-Mexico border stretches 1,241 miles, but only 145 miles have any sort of substantive fence or wall.
Abbott’s deliberately extravagant gesture was intended to demonstrate his willingness to defend the area against illegal immigrants while Washington remained idle.
“In the Biden administration’s absence, Texas is stepping up to get the job done by building the border wall,” Abbott said at a press conference in June 2021. “Through this comprehensive public safety effort, we will secure the border, slow the influx of unlawful immigrants, and restore order in our border communities.”
Abbott made a $250 million down payment on the project and hired a program manager to start planning where the wall would be built.
Texas began construction on a massive wall along its border with Mexico in December 2022, following a year and a half of little progress. Abbott attributed the delays to the acquisition of privately owned and federally protected land in the Rio Grande Valley and Laredo, Texas.
“More border wall is going up next month,” Abbott stated in an X post. “It took months to negotiate with private property owners along the border for the right to build on their land. We should now be building more border wall throughout next year.”
More border wall construction will begin next month.
It took months to negotiate with border property owners for the right to build on their land.
We should now be building more border wall throughout next year.
The state initially focused its building efforts on a small tract of land where a farmer’s crop was “totally destroyed” due to the number of illegal immigrants who crossed the Rio Grande and then trampled through the fields, according to then-Texas General Land Office Commissioner George P. Bush.
The section of farmland being walled is now owned by the Texas General Land Office and leased to the farmer, allowing the state to construct on its own land.
Bush, the son of former Florida Governor Jeb Bush and the nephew of former President George W. Bush, oversaw the state’s initial search for building land.
The state has $4 billion on hand for border security operations and has made the border wall project available to the public.
