The Biden administration is spending $130,000 per day on storing and maintaining unused border wall panels. Senate Republicans of the Senate Armed Forces Committee sent a letter on Wednesday inquiring about this case with the information that they received from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
In the letter, they asked the Defense Department why around $50 million was spent in a year on trying to store material that was bought during the Trump administration to reinforce the wall.
Led by ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., and signed by Texas Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn and a few other Republican committee members, the Senate Republicans have claimed that they were “disturbed” after finding out that the administration had been paying private landowners to keep the products secure.
Currently, there are more than 20,000 border wall sections, or bollard panels, being stored across 20 different project sites along the Southern border according to the letter sent to Melissa Dalton, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland defense and hemispheric affairs. They added that the Department of Defense makes daily payments of $130,000 in order to maintain and keep the material secure. However, they argue that this money would be better spent on actually supporting the border and reducing the number of migrants who can enter the region.
USACE had confirmed that the Biden administration canceled the border wall contracts in 2021 which resulted in the excess material needing to be stored and maintained across the border which resulted in the $130,000 daily cost.
