Things at the border have just been getting worse. As my colleague Mike Miller reported, there’s an 800 percent increase of Chinese illegal aliens crossing the border. But Joe Biden doesn’t seem to care about it. What problem could there possibly be from such an influx of so many military-aged men from a country hostile to our interests?
On top of that, there’s been an increase of 33 percent in illegal alien encounters between June and July. In June, there were 99,539 encounters, and July had 132,652 encounters, according to the CBP data.
So you might think that Joe Biden would do all he can to stop such an influx. But if you’ve been watching what he’s doing since the day he came into office, you would know that isn’t the case. Indeed, he seems to do what he can to make everything worse.
Biden not only stopped the building of the wall former President Donald Trump had well underway the minute he came in, he just left the materials that had been ordered rather than use them, paying more to have them not used and to terminate contracts for building. That’s what a small and petty man he is on the subject. He paid a ton NOT to complete the wall.
In 2021, Senate Republicans blistered Biden for spending $2 billion on storage costs and termination fees as he tried to wind down Trump’s wall-building contracts — and this year, congressional investigators found that the DOD was continuing to shell out $130,000 a day on storage fees for unused wall parts.
Now there’s more to the story of his continuing pettiness. The Democrat-led Senate passed a Republican bill agreeing to continue the wall — the “Finish It Act” as part of the defense appropriations past package in July. The Act says that the material Biden has left lying around to rust should be used to complete the wall or given to states like Texas to finish the wall. The fact that this provision made it through a Democrat-controlled Senate tells you how bad the border crisis is.
So what Biden is doing in response is truly despicable. He’s rushing to sell all the material now, at a loss, before the House can pass the Act and he would be forced to use it or give it to the states.
They’re selling them for peanuts on the down low through GovPlanet, an online auction house.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers … has already transferred approximately $154 million worth of the roughly $260 million of bollard panels and other materials,” according to Lt. Col. Devin T. Robinson, who used Defense Department lingo for the process of consigning military surplus items to commercial resellers or the trash heap.
Profits from the sale flow back to the Pentagon’s budget.
But GovPlanet is under strict instructions to keep the border-wall connection hush-hush.
“We are legally not allowed to mention these are the border wall materials, or we could lose our jobs,” a GovPlanet source told the Daily Upside, the financial newsletter that first reported the ongoing sales.
Republicans excoriated Biden for the move.
“This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the bill’s sponsor, told The Post — denouncing the move as “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”
“Leaving the border open to terrorists while selling border security materials at a loss is Bidenomics in a nutshell,” said Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), a co-sponsor.
Biden has shown he has no shame on the matter since he started. However, this takes his devotion to leaving the border open and the security of the United States vulnerable to a new low.
