Story at a glance:
- A border wall levee is getting repaired to prevent flooding.
- The repair comes at a time when the Rio Grande Valley is seeing migration from undocumented immigrants heading towards Texas.
- The Biden administration and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are adamant the repairs are not an expansion or meant to address immigration.
The Biden administration will repair a damaged southern border wall levee, not to be confused with building a wall to address immigration, they say.
A levee in the Rio Grande Valley that stretches 13.4 miles is in need of repairs while an ongoing border crisis occurs, Fox News Channel’s Bill Melugin reported.
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Repairs on the levee wall were set to begin six weeks in advance to prevent flooding, followed up with a concrete levee wall fit with safety barriers in six to nine months.
The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) are responsible for the repairs, and it clarified that the wall would not be expanded on, just repaired.
In support of CBP’s border infrastructure program, USACE has resumed DHS-funded design & construction support on approx. 13.4 miles of levee in the Rio Grande Valley that were partially excavated or at various levels of construction when work on the wall was paused for review.
— USACE HQ (@USACEHQ) May 12, 2021
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said in a statement that repairs will “protect border communities from physical dangers,” and that “large holes’ were blown into the Rio Grande Valley’s flood barrier system to make way for the wall which, as a result, requires repairing to prevent “catastrophic flooding.”
In January as one of his first actions, President Biden issued an executive order that halted all border wall construction.
As Changing America previously reported, more than 50 undocumented immigrants crossed the Rio Grande from Mexico into Texas Monday, footage from news cameras shows, highlighting the ongoing challenges on the border.
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