The Biden administration plans to move forward with new border wall construction along the U.S.-Mexico border, a policy that Democrats have viewed as a "racist" and "ineffective" solution to flaws in the immigration system.
President Biden, speaking after his administration announced border wall construction in Texas, said at the White House on Thursday that he tried to "redirect" the money for the project and denied that border walls work.
Biden's comments contrast those made on Wednesday by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who cited an "acute and immediate need" to waive 26 federal laws to construct border walls in the Rio Grande Valley Sector.
Mayorkas later seemed to walk back his comments, claiming they were "taken out of context" and did not suggest a change in policy.
The president has previously promised that not a "single foot" of new border wall would be installed under his leadership.
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Proposed policies to create barriers along the southern border have led to contentious debate among public officials for decades but reached a fever pitch under the Trump administration.
In December 2018, Trump demanded $5 billion for his wall, but a standoff ensued with Democrats spearheaded by then-Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.
Both Schumer and Pelosi had been vocally opposed to Trump's border wall plans since he announced his campaign in 2015. At the time, Trump claimed that Mexico would pay to install the wall. However, he backed away from this campaign promise throughout his presidency.
In April 2017, Pelosi said the wall was "immoral, expensive and unwise," pointing out that Trump never said he would pass billions of funding onto taxpayers.
She would use similar language the following year, eventually calling the border wall a "manhood issue" for Trump during an October 2018 press conference at the Harvard Kennedy School.
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Her position was shared by Schumer, who said on the Senate floor in 2018 that while he agreed "secure fencing" in some areas makes sense, a "medieval wall" along the entire length of the border would not make the country any safer.
Schumer would go on to call the border wall "expensive" and "ineffective" over the next year.
Ahead of the 2019 government shutdown, Pelosi said the wall was "an immorality" and claimed it would be "the least effective way to protect the border—and the most costly."
"I can't think of any reason why anyone would think it's a good idea — unless this has something to do with something else," she added.
With the shutdown well underway, Hawaii Democrat Sen. Mazie Hirono had referred to the wall as a "vanity project" for the former president and claimed that Trump was holding government employees "hostage."
In January, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., had agreed with Pelosi that a wall would be "immoral." At the same time, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., claimed Trump's "ultimate goal" was to make America "pure" and devoid of minorities.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., would address the wall in an Instagram chat with her followers the next month.
"No matter how you feel about the wall—you know I think it's a moral abomination. I think it's like the Berlin Wall," she said.
Cortez later would refer to the wall as a "xenophobic campaign stunt."
Trump eventually moved to end the shutdown on January 15, 2020, accepting $1.4 billion for border wall construction. Trump soon declared the surge of migrants at the southern border a national emergency, allowing him access to another $3.8 billion in spending from the Pentagon budget.
This decision led to a renewed outcry from Democrats, who had already amped up their rhetoric.
Some of the most inflammatory language on the issue came in January 2020 from Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn.
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"I join the similar calls made by my colleagues today and I demand that the president end his temper tantrums and quest for a racist and sinful big wall," she said on the House floor.
Similar comments were made by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., during a town hall in February 2020.
With the real threat of the coronavirus still looming, Warren was asked if the Trump administration's response to the virus was sufficient.
"I'm going to be introducing a plan tomorrow to take every dime that the president is now spending on his racist wall at our southern border and divert it to work on the coronavirus," she said on CNN.
Democrats repeatedly suggested that Trump's border wall was anti-immigrant and racist throughout his tenure as president.
"No more ripping babies from their mothers. No more Muslim ban. No more racist border wall. We are going to undo everything Trump has done to demonize immigrants and Latinos," Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., tweeted in November 2019.
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Former Rep. Beto O'Rourke, D-Texas, was one of the first to attach racism to Trump's immigration plan, suggesting that the former president's rhetoric on migrants imbued the wall with racial subtext.
"When you begin with the premise that Mexico is sending rapists and criminals to the United States and then you meet that with a wall, that well in itself is a racist reaction to a racist myth," he said in August 2018.
Two months earlier, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said the Trump administration was using the "grief" and "tears" of migrant children as "mortar" to build their wall.
The Biden administration had put a halt to new border wall construction in early 2021 after Biden had promised as a presidential candidate that there would "not be another foot of wall constructed on my administration." The administration said wall construction under the Trump administration was "just one example of the prior administration's misplaced priorities and failure to manage migration in a safe, orderly and humane way."
However, the construction is funded by the fiscal year 2019 Department of Homeland Security appropriations bill, which specifically funded wall projects in the Rio Grande Valley Sector and which DHS is required to use for its appropriated purpose.
Fox News' Greg Norman and Adam Shaw contributed to this report.
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