Congress Moves Forward with Billions in Funding for Border Wall Construction

Today, in a party-line vote, the House Homeland Security Committee approved $46 billion in funding for the construction of new border wall and barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border. The funding will be part of the Republican budget reconciliation package. Despite billions of dollars spent on border wall construction in past decades, federal agencies have found that border wall construction has significant negative impacts on the environment and cultural resources. In anticipation of today’s hearing, numerous groups sent a letter to the committee condemning this proposal.

“Despite its well-documented damages on communities and ecosystems, Republicans are attempting to greenlight more than two times as much money for Trump’s disastrous wall than has ever been spent on border wall construction in the history of our country,” said Cameron Walkup, associate legislative representative at Earthjustice. “Instead of spending tens of billions of dollars to destroy the borderlands with more construction, Congress should invest in the real needs of border communities and rescind the waivers that allow President Trump to bypass all federal laws and environmental protections to accelerate border wall construction.”

“The construction of the wall on the U.S.-Mexico border has been an expensive and environmentally destructive fiasco that has succeeded only in stopping the movements of threatened and endangered wildlife. The border wall construction has altered, damaged, or permanently destroyed numerous springs and important water resources — in some cases resulting in flooding that has proven deadly to both wildlife and people on either side of the border. Construction has also destroyed numerous fragile desert wildlife habitats, and has injured many Tribal communities along the border through the destruction and desecration of important resources and cultural sites — including burial sites. Great Old Broads for Wilderness joins with our partner organizations and many others in calling on Congress to stop wasting taxpayer money on this ill-conceived and poorly-executed ecological and human disaster, and to reject any further funding for border wall construction,” said LD Delano, Chair, Board of Directors, Great Old Broads for Wilderness.

“The border wall is the textbook definition of a boondoggle. Congress throwing another $46 billion dollars at this destructive and pointless project would be an incredible waste of taxpayer money,” said Rachel’s Network President Fern Shepard.

“The borderlands deserve investment to help communities thrive and to protect the remarkable natural and cultural resources found here and nowhere else. The hastily built, environmentally destructive border wall does not stop people, and will require throwing good money after bad to try and keep the wall standing over the years. This continues to be a political stunt that has gone on far too long, and the harms will be felt along the border for decades,” said Emily Burns, Sky Island Alliance.

“Some of our nation’s most sensitive and important public lands are found along the Southwest border. If Congress chooses to use these tax dollars to fund border wall construction, we may be on a path of destruction that can’t be reversed,” said Bryan Bird, Southwest Director for Defenders of Wildlife. “The loss of habitat for imperiled species and potential impacts on National Parks and Wildlife Refuges would be inexcusable.“

“I am appalled by the notion of creating more border walls with Mexico that have shown for decades now to be a failed approach, causing irreparable damage to our communities and to the environment. It’s time we invest in cross border collaboration and friendship, not violent acts of separation and division, in order to resolve modern challenges,” said Dan Watman, Program Director, Friends of International Friendship Park.

“The areas that we have left without a border wall are the last wildlife corridors and opportunities for survival of species already in danger. Building walls in these remote areas will do nothing to stop undocumented immigration but will affect wildlife and communities for generations to come,” said Erick Meza from the Sierra Club Borderlands program. “We’re at a crossroads: Will we prioritize division and short-term politics, or choose solutions that honor life — both human and wild? The borderlands’ survival depends on this choice.”

“This is an obscene use of public funds and an assault on endangered species, Indigenous communities, and public lands in the border region,” said Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Border wall construction has bulldozed wildlife refuges, blasted apart sacred Indigenous sites, and destroyed critical habitat, and much of that damage is permanent. We can’t afford to waste another cent on this reckless, irreversible destruction.”

“Congress is using immigrants as a scapegoat to obscure how they are the real cause of environmental degradation on public lands of the southern border,” said Olivia Juarez, Public Land Program Director of GreenLatinos. “Funding the border wall at this scale is a slap in the face to the communities that need investment for restoration and a thriving, dignified economy — none of which the border wall will elicit.”

“By deliberately destroying the ecosystems on which we depend, we ultimately will be destroying a piece of ourselves that can never be brought back. These callous cruel decisions by congress is ecocide. Period.”, said Kate Scott, Co-founder, Madrean Archipelago Wildlife Center.

“Don’t we all try to leave a better world for the future generations? The consequences of the ecological impact of the border wall on the environment and on native wildlife species is not a better world, in any way you want to look at it, even if the border wall was effective in solving any of the issues of our communities in the U.S. The border wall is a waste of taxpayers’ money today and will be an additional waste in the future to be maintained or even removed, once we realize how damaging and useless this is,” said Robert Wolf, Mexico General Manager at Northern Jaguar Project.

“President Trump and his Republican cohorts are incredibly adept at manufacturing and fabrication- that is, manufacturing a national emergency immigration crisis that does not exist. Whatever happened to fiscal responsibility? At a time when illegal immigration rates are at their lowest on record, and meaningful programs that help Americans are being cut across-the-board, this so-called ‘trimming the fat and taking a haircut’ party wants to spend over 46,000 million dollars on a project that has little value except to line the pockets of their campaign donors and spread more misinformation and propaganda about the borderlands and its inhabitants,” said Myles Traphagen of Wildlands Network.

“Border communities need real investments in healthcare, education and good-paying jobs, but instead the House Committee’s Homeland Security budget reconciliation proposal would waste tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to expand the deadly border wall, all while threatening to cut crucial safety net programs at the expense of keeping our communities safe and healthy,” said Lillian Serrano, Director of the Southern Border Communities Coalition. “For years, billions of taxpayer dollars have been squandered to construct hundreds of miles of border wall that has only wreaked incalculable damage, tearing through sensitive ecosystems, Indigenous sacred sites, and families’ backyards. This wasteful spending will only deepen the damage and leave lasting scars on our border communities for generations to come.”

“We have already been through this exercise of waste, fraud, and inefficiency with the Border Wall,” said Tricia Cortez, executive director of the Rio Grande International Study Center. “Border crossings are at historic lows, without a wall. The damage to private property and public parks is irreversible, and it removes our rights as American citizens to freely access the Rio Grande, the main source of life for millions of people. It smacks of Big Government which contributes to immense local opposition to this politically-motivated project. Those of us from the border who live and work here know that the Wall ignores the reality of our daily lives. The border IS beautiful. If leaders in DC are really serious about cutting waste, fraud, and abuse, the wall should be the first project on the chopping block.”