Press reports emerged Thursday indicating that the Biden administration is hauling off unused border panels in Nogales, Tucson, and Three Points border zones, potentially in direct contravention of Senator Roger Wicker’s, R-Miss.,’s FINISH IT Act which became law last year in the Fiscal Year 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.
Specifically, the FINISH IT Act forced the Department of Defense (DoD) to allow millions of dollars of unused border wall panels already owned by the U.S. government to be used to extend the wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
Senator Wicker, R-Miss., the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, released the following statement:
“The Biden-Harris administration has been so hostile to border security that it threw millions of dollars at the storage of border wall materials, rather than using them to secure the border. Worse, after Senate Armed Services Republicans exposed the wasteful costs for this thoughtless program, we discovered these materials were auctioned off at massive discounts online,” Senator Wicker said. “My bill required much of the claimed remaining materials to secure the southern border. However, rather than leaving unclaimed materials for the Trump administration to use, it appears that the Biden administration has continued to auction off the remaining materials at a tremendous fiscal loss. This is an outrageous waste of taxpayer money, and now more will have to be spent to acquire new materials for completing the wall and finally securing our border, as President Trump has vowed to do.”
The FINISH IT Act followed an investigation by Senate Armed Services Committee Republicans that revealed the DoD is spending $47 million per year, or $130,000 per day, to store the panels at various locations across the Southwest. The legislation requires the federal government to deploy the materials or transfer them to state governments who will use them for wall construction.
