In early October, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would resume building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. To do so, Biden suspended several federal laws to accelerate construction in rural Starr County, where former President Donald Trump’s own wall efforts were met with fierce resistance from landowners.
The move is a significant flip-flop from Biden’s 2020 campaign promise to build “not another foot” of wall. This has sparked widespread opposition from the same coalition that opposed Trump’s wall—immigration advocates, border communities, and Democratic lawmakers—who not long ago cheered Biden’s decision in early 2021 to pause all construction of Trump’s wall.
Governor Greg Abbott has been waiting for this moment for two years. He’s seized on this news as a means not only to cast Biden’s efforts as a feeble political ploy, but to promote the progress made on his own pledge to build Texas’ own border wall with state taxpayer funds.
