There's no excusing Joe Biden deciding to add to Donald Trump's border wall

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed,” then-candidate Joe Biden said in an interview with Black and Latino journalists in August 2020 when asked about his immigration policy. Yet on Thursday, a year after a Government Accountability Office report said former President Donald Trump’s border wall resulted in “significant damage and destruction” to the environment and cultural sites, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it had waived 26 federal laws, allowing border wall construction to continue.

The White House and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection say Congress had already approved funding for fencing in 2019, and that they were only following this funding appropriation. In June, DHS authorized CBP to “move forward with the planning and execution of up to approximately 20 miles of border barrier system” in the Rio Grande Valley. That's a cop-out. Biden could have used the GAO for cover not to resume construction of a border wall.