This article was originally published by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative news outlet. Sign up for their weekly newsletter, or follow them on Facebook and Twitter.”
In early October, President Joe Biden announced that his administration would resume building a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border. To do so, Biden suspended several federal laws to accelerate construction” of wall. This has sparked widespread opposition from the same coalition that opposed Trump’s wall—immigration advocates, border communities, and Democratic lawmakers—who not long ago cheered Biden’s decision in early 2021 to pause all construction of Trump’s wall.
Abbott’s new and aggressive PR campaign is a stark departure from how he’s typically handled the project since he first announced the initiative about two years ago. That’s in large part because there wasn’t much to boast of as the Texas wall was slow to get off the ground.
By August, the state said it had completed nearly a quarter of its first phase of construction, with 10.6 miles of new wall. The Facilities Commission projects that the rest will be finished by the end of next year, according to agency documents. But the agency says that, to do so, it will burn through the first billion appropriated for the wall in 2021 and need to spend at least “a portion of” the second round of funding that the Lege passed earlier this year.
In late September, Abbott appointees on the Facilities Commission unanimously approved a series of amendments adding more money and mileage to contracts awarded to the firms building the first 44 miles of the wall, bringing the total maximum amount of those contracts to $1.28 billion, per agency records. That’s nearly $300 million more than the nearly $1 billion lawmakers appropriated for the first phase of wall construction back in 2021.
As the state became mired in problems acquiring land—from title issues to landowner resistance—to build through areas with smaller parcels and more property owners like the small border towns south of Laredo or around Roma in western Starr County, the Facilities Commission has pivoted to an alternate strategy: courting the big ranchers with vast land holdings along the border.
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