Congressional watchdog describes border wall harm
Says agencies should work together to help ease damage
PHOENIX — The construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border under former President Donald Trump toppled untold numbers of saguaro cactuses in Arizona, put endangered ocelots at risk in Texas and disturbed Native American burial grounds, the official congressional watchdog said Thursday.
A report released by the Government Accountability Office offers the first independent assessment of damage caused by the building of more than 450 miles of wall while in-depth environmental reviews were waived and the concerns of Native American tribes went largely ignored in the rush to finish the barrier.
Now, U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Interior Department should work together to ease the damage, the GAO said. It recommended that the agencies coordinate to decide how much repair work will cost, how to fund it, and how long it will take.
A Customs and Border Protection spokesman said Wednesday that the agency is working on a response to the report. An Interior Department spokeswoman said the agency would have no comment.
“What makes Trump’s border wall so egregious is that his administration waived dozens of environmental, public health, cultural preservation and even contract procurement laws to build it,” said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a southern Arizona Democrat who requested the GAO review. “Before construction even started, communities, tribes and other stakeholders were raising the alarm about the colossal damage that bypassing such fundamental protections would have.”
Mr. Grijalva said he is urging fellow lawmakers to transfer at least $225 million from Homeland Security to the Interior Department and Forest Service in the upcoming budget for restoration efforts.
Mr. Trump and his supporters have argued that a strong physical barrier along the border is necessary to keep out drugs and people trying to enter the U.S. illegally.
“We applied a commonsense, balanced approach in an effort to address environmental concerns while prioritizing our main goal of securing the nation’s border to reduce a vast set of complex threats from entering the U.S.,” said Mark Morgan, who was Customs and Border Protection’s acting commissioner during the Trump administration.
“Speaking personally, if we disrupt a butterfly habitat or a few cacti die in exchange for disrupting the cartel’s operational capacity to threaten our nation’s safety and national security, I’m OK with that tradeoff,” said Mr. Morgan, now a visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. “The wall saved lives and disrupted the cartel’s ability to improve their operational control of our country’s borders.”
Environmental groups said the GAO report confirmed their earlier complaints. They said future repair work could benefit from more involvement by the Interior Department, a lead manager of the federal land where much of the damage occurred.
“We hope this report will help people understand the degree of destruction the wall truly inflicted,” said Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, among the groups consulted.
Emily Burns, program director for ecological group Sky Islands Alliance, called it “refreshing to see the accountability from the federal government.”
The border stretches across nearby 2,000 miles along California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Sections of what Mr. Trump called his “big, beautiful wall” were installed between January 2017 and January 2021 by contractors for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Defense.
President Joe Biden paused construction after he took office in January 2021.