Biden’s Border Wall, Explained

After the Department of Homeland Security announced it would waive laws to enable miles of border wall construction in Texas, President Joe Biden said he “can’t stop” the money being spent on border barriers because of the way it was appropriated by Congress. That’s correct, experts told us.

When asked about the news on Oct. 5 that new border wall construction would indeed commence under his administration, Biden told reporters: “The border wall — the money was appropriated for the border wall. I tried to get to them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”

“Yes, the President’s hands are tied,” Gabe Murphy, policy analyst at the budget watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, told us when we asked about Biden’s claim. He pointed us to an appropriations bill that was signed into law on Dec. 20, 2019, during the Trump administration, that “explicitly appropriated funding ‘for the construction of a barrier system along the southwest border.'”