GOP senators call for Biden’s border wall restrictions to be revoked ahead of looming deadline

Senate Republicans have slammed President Joe Biden’s executive orders preventing further border wall construction just ahead of an expiration date on one of the actions which restricts the project along the nation’s southern border from going forward.

In a letter co-signed by 40 GOP senators, Senator Shelley Moore Capito (R—WV) urged the Office of Government Accountability to review the legality of the president’s executive order freezing funds Congress had previously appropriated for border wall construction. 

The senators attacked Mr Biden over the influx of migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border and claimed his “actions directly contributed to this unfortunate, yet entirely avoidable, scenario” while adding: “They are also a blatant violation of federal law and infringe on Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.”

“An appropriations act is a law like any other,” the letter stated. “Therefore, the president must take care to ensure that appropriations are prudently obligated in the manner they were provided by Congress.”

Upon taking office earlier this year, Mr Biden signed a series of executive orders to reform the way the country manages its immigration system as he vowed to overhaul major components of the current strategy — including no longer funding or building new border wall construction. 

The White House informed Congress of its decision to revoke the funding in advance, an official formality that must be conducted in order to suspend congressional funding towards an appropriated issue. 

In their letter to the Government Accountability Office, the Republican lawmakers argued the Biden administration’s notice was not the specific “special message” required for such a move. 

The letter comes as the president faces a looming deadline on Sunday, at which point one of his first executive orders was set to expire which restricts border wall construction along the southern border. 

While it remains unclear what happens after Sunday, the White House has refused to reverse course or indicate any support for new border wall construction whatsoever.

In a statement following the announcement of the Republican-backed letter, an official for the Office of Management and budget reportedly said: “Like every nation, the United States has a right and a duty to secure its borders and protect its people against threats, but building a massive wall that spans the entire southern border is not a serious policy solution.”

“The billions of American taxpayer dollars that the previous administration redirected for border wall construction were never appropriated by Congress for that purpose,” the OMB statement continued, “and President Biden’s proclamation makes it quite clear that construction should only be paused to the extent permitted by law.”

The White House has not said what it planned to do with the $1.4 billion Congress had appropriated for border wall funding. Meanwhile, calls have grown for the new administration to confront the burgeoning human rights crisis in the region, with a reported 4,200 children in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection as of Monday.

In a recent press briefing, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki suggested the previous administration’s “dismantled, immoral, and ineffective immigration policy” on immigration and focus on the border wall was to blame for the current crisis.