US President Joe Biden revered his 2020 election pledge to not build any more of the border wall along the US-Mexican border on Thursday, approving the construction of a segment of the wall in the Yuma, Arizona area to stem record numbers of illegal border crossings.
The White House plan calls for building four pieces of the wall to complete holes that have enabled a large number of illegal immigrants to cross into Yuma.
The Department of Homeland Security said the new plan was put in place to "deploy modern, effective border measures" and improve "safety and security along the Southwest Border,” according to Fox News.
The Yuma border area was a major problem for the Biden administration, with criticism levelled at the White House as data showed border patrol agents stopping over 160,000 border crossers from the period of January to June of this year, four times the number from 2021.
The area was also problematic under the Trump administration that had issued an order for the border wall to be constructed in Yuma.
While Republicans in Congress had repeatedly urged Biden to secure the Yuma border area, the administration only acted after a similar call came from Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ).
The construction of the wall is a u-turn for Biden, who until now had been highly critical of the border wall that was a hallmark of President Donald Trump’s time in office.
Biden went as far as penning an op-ed in the Miami Herald in which he described Trump’s “build the wall” slogan as “divorced from reality,” alleged that a border would would not “stop the flow of illegal narcotics or human trafficking, both of which come primarily through legal ports of entry” and would not “stem the numbers of undocumented, most of whom over-stay legal visas.”