Biden recovers more than $ 2 billion from Trump's wall budget. This is how he plans to spend them

By EFE

The White House announced Friday that the Pentagon recovered about $ 2.2 billion that former President Donald Trump diverted to build the wall on the border with Mexico, and asked Congress not to force him to spend $ 1.4 billion more on the border barrier.

In a statement, the White House explained that the Pentagon will dedicate the $ 2.2 billion that the Trump administration diverted to the items to which those funds were originally intended:

a total of 66 projects in 11 United States states, three territories and 16 countries.

Of that amount, nearly $ 1.3 billion will go to projects abroad, including more than $ 33 million at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba, according to the Pentagon.

[Mexico never paid for the border wall.

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Although President Joe Biden's administration may recoup some of the funds diverted by Trump, there is another $ 1.4 billion that Congress approved specifically for the border wall for this fiscal year.

The Department of Homeland Security is required by law to use these funds for the purpose designated by Congress, so the White House asked the legislature to "cancel" that item, in order to spend that money on other types of border security measures. , more "modern and efficient" than the wall.

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Throughout his four years in power, Trump raised $ 15 billion to replace the border fence and erect new stretches of wall along 727 kilometers (452 ​​miles) of the border, covering more than a quarter of the 3,145 kilometers (1,954 miles) that separate the country from Mexico.

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Of that $ 15 billion, about $ 5 billion was approved by Congress specifically for Trump's flagship project, and another $ 10 billion was diverted from anti-drug trafficking projects and of another type.

When he left power, he had about $ 3.6 billion left to spend on the wall, which includes the 2,200 recovered this Friday and the 1,400 tied by Congress to the border project.

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On his first day in power, on January 20, Biden signed a decree that ordered an end to the national emergency decreed by Trump to divert funds towards the construction of the wall, and stop works on it.

The Department of Homeland Security announced this Friday, in addition, that after reviewing what to do with a grant that Congress had granted to build the wall, it

decided to use those funds to "address urgent environmental and security issues"

that resulted from the construction of the barrier in California and the Rio Grande Valley (Texas).

"This is a victory for border communities, for immigrant communities and for our environment. Once again, they will be able to prosper without the threat of a border wall," the director of legislation and community policy of the organization Earthjustice, Raúl García.