(CN) — Eight 30-foot-tall border wall prototypes took shape in a remote corner of the San Diego community of Otay Mesa during President Donald Trump’s first year on the job — a campaign promise come to life which dwarfed the previous iteration of the wall. But those prototypes, since demolished, may foreshadow what’s to come for the rest of Trump’s border wall under the incoming Biden administration.
Legal and border experts say while they not only expect Biden will fulfill his own campaign promise “there will be not another foot of wall constructed,” the incoming administration and Congress will likely make changes to ensure any potential future construction cannot supersede environmental laws aimed at protecting species for whom the border wall impedes their survival.
“The big question”: border wall remedies
Congressman Raul Grijalva, an outspoken critic against Trump’s border wall, represents the area most impacted by border wall construction: the borderlands in southern Arizona.
“There’s this mad rush — there’s no other way to explain it — to get as much done as possible before Jan. 20 on the part of contractors, Homeland Security and the Trump administration for construction of the wall,” Grijalva said in a phone interview.
“It’s creating more adverse situations for people and other life forms, water and the border itself. It’s concerning to me because it’s a dangerous political response that is happening in south Texas and Arizona.”
Grijalva said he expects Biden will keep his pledge not to build another foot of border wall. But he said the “big question” for the incoming administration is how to remediate the damage done to natural resources and Native American cultural sites.
“Some of the money being hastily wasted on construction should be used on remediation,” Grijalva said, adding: “It’s not just a question of stopping the wall; it’s correcting the damage that has been done.”
To correct that damage, Grijalva said he will work with Congress “to get rid of those waivers” under the REAL ID Act of 2005 which were used by the Trump administration to circumvent environmental laws to erect the border wall as quickly as possible.
The waivers were challenged in multiple lawsuits brought by conservationists, the American Civil Liberties Union, California and other advocates, but they were largely unsuccessful in blocking border wall construction.
Beyond revoking the waivers utilized to grant blanket exemptions of critical environmental laws to speed up construction of the border wall, Grijalva said there needs to be an audit of the construction contracts handed out as well as “real transparency and oversight of Homeland Security.”
“One of things I would do administratively is audit expenditures, contracts, changes and how this money was used by companies handpicked by Trump to do the job. I think a public audit is critical because it will also tell a story,” Grijalva said.
Austin Evers, executive director of nonprofit ethics watchdog group and Freedom of Information Act litigator American Oversight, said his organization found in its “Audit the Wall” investigation much of the construction wall that had been cast as part of efforts to build a contiguous border wall actually only replaced existing fencing.
He said prior administrations made decisions to build border infrastructure barriers on a sector-by-sector basis “and few of them called for portions of wall to be built.”
“I expect the Biden administration to return to a facts and law-based approach to border policy. The question was never whether to secure the border, but the right way to do it was never on Twitter — it was based on sector-by-sector analyses and considering tribal and environmental risks and costs,” Evers said in an interview.