Joe Biden has announced that his administration will be ending the declaration of a national emergency on the southern border that was first declared by the Trump Administration, as reported by Fox News.
President Trump first declared the national emergency in February of 2019, which allowed him to allocate billions of federal dollars to the construction of the wall after Congress repeatedly blocked his efforts to do so. The move allowed for nearly 500 miles of new border wall to be constructed by the end of his first term. Biden announced the decision in a letter to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), in which he described the policy as “unwarranted.”
Despite the move, the Biden Administration will leave approximately 3,600 troops stationed along the border for the remainder of the fiscal year. This comes after Biden had already reversed other immigration policies from the Trump era, including ordering a halt to construction of the border wall, pushing for mass amnesty for millions of illegal aliens, and an attempted moratorium on deportations that was blocked by a federal judge.
A Pentagon spokesman said that the troops remaining on the border would continue to assist border patrol authorities with various logistical operations, including “aviation, maintenance, detection and monitoring, transportation, and mobile surveillance,” but would not be assisting in any further border wall construction. In addition, another 600 troops have been deployed to the border to assist the Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection in monitoring any illegal immigration that could bring new cases of the coronavirus into the country.