Where Trump's border wall left deep scars and open gaps, Biden plans repair job
GUADALUPE CANYON, Ariz. — The demolition crews kept right on blasting through the Peloncillo Mountains long after Donald Trump lost the election, a result that doomed their contracts. They carved steep roads at dizzying angles and gouged a wide path through the ridgeline where the border wall would go. The clock ran out before they built it, leaving behind a mutilated landscape and a boneyard of steel fence panels stacked by the hundreds. At more than $41 million per mile, Guadalupe Canyon was the most expensive segment of a $15 billion megaproject that ranked among the costliest in U.S. history. Today the abandoned border wall site is a liability for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, with loose rocks and boulders sliding down the mountainsides.
In the year since President Biden halted border wall construction, his administration has been developing plans to put its own stamp on Trump’s pet project. Biden has waved off calls from activists to tear the structure down and recycle the steel. The president promised while he campaigned that there would “not be another foot,” but his government has been adding new barriers as it shores up 13 miles of flood levees along the Rio Grande and fixes other segments left in a precarious state by the contractors rushing to build right up to Biden’s inauguration.
In recent weeks, CBP officials have been soliciting input from ranchers, environmental advocates, landowners and others as the Biden administration prepares to spend hundreds of millions for border wall remediation. The money, which will include unused construction funds, will go to clean up worksites, stabilize areas facing erosion and remedy some of the worst environmental damage, while also allowing CBP to close gaps in the wall. The precise details — where and how much money — remain undefined.
Paul Enriquez, the deputy director of the CBP infrastructure division responsible for the border wall, said the Biden administration’s remediation effort will prioritize “safety, erosion and flood control,” to ensure roads and hillsides don’t wash out and the barrier itself “does not fail and cause some sort of life safety issue for the public, local residents or agents who patrol in that area.”
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