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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Biden Notifies Congress That National Emergency on the Border Is Over

President Biden informed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday that he has terminated the national emergency on the southwest border declared by former President Trump on Feb. 15, 2019, in order to build a border wall.

Trump initially declared a national emergency two years ago to bypass a congressional standoff over funding the project and divert military construction funds to the wall. Days before Biden was sworn in, Trump extended the national emergency designation through Feb. 15, 2022.

“The ongoing border security and humanitarian crisis at the southern border of the United States continues to threaten our national security, including by exacerbating the effect of the pandemic caused by COVID-19,” Trump said in the Jan. 15 extension under the National Emergencies Act. “The executive branch has taken steps to address the crisis, but further action is needed to address the humanitarian crisis and to control unlawful migration and the flow of narcotics and criminals across the southern border of the United States.”

In an executive order just after taking office in January, Biden said that the national emergency would be “terminated and that the authorities invoked in that proclamation will no longer be used to construct a wall at the southern border.” As fas as funds already appropriated for wall construction, Biden directed “a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to construct a southern border wall.”

In the notification to Pelosi, Biden said he has “determined that the declaration of a national emergency at our southern border was unwarranted.”

“I have also announced that it shall be the policy of my Administration that no more American taxpayer dollars be diverted to construct a border wall, and that I am directing a careful review of all resources appropriated or redirected to that end,” he said.

Biden said that the authorities invoked in Trump’s Jan. 15 proclamation “will no longer be used to construct a wall at the southern border.”

Last week, Biden signed three executive orders to roll back immigration policies put in place by the previous administration and establish a task force charged with reuniting families still apart from the zero-tolerance border separation policy.

Before leaving office, Trump journeyed to Texas to declare he had built 450 miles of border wall. Only 47 of those miles are new, while the rest replaced existing barriers in need of repair or shorter pedestrian/vehicle barriers.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told senators during his confirmation hearing that DHS would study “the question of what we do with respect to the wall that has already been built.”

“The border is varied, depending on the geography, depending on the specific venue, and depending on the conduct of individuals around it,” Mayorkas said. “And we don’t need nor should we have a monolithic answer to that varied and diverse challenge.”

Biden Notifies Congress That National Emergency on the Border Is Over Homeland Security Today
Bridget Johnson
Bridget Johnson is the Managing Editor for Homeland Security Today. A veteran journalist whose news articles and analyses have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe, Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor and a foreign policy writer at The Hill. Previously she was an editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and syndicated nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. Bridget is a terrorism analyst and security consultant with a specialty in online open-source extremist propaganda, incitement, recruitment, and training. She hosts and presents in Homeland Security Today law enforcement training webinars studying a range of counterterrorism topics including conspiracy theory extremism, complex coordinated attacks, critical infrastructure attacks, arson terrorism, drone and venue threats, antisemitism and white supremacists, anti-government extremism, and WMD threats. She is a Senior Risk Analyst for Gate 15 and a private investigator. Bridget is an NPR on-air contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, National Review Online, Politico, New York Daily News, The Jerusalem Post, The Hill, Washington Times, RealClearWorld and more, and has myriad television and radio credits including Al-Jazeera, BBC and SiriusXM.
Bridget Johnson
Bridget Johnson
Bridget Johnson is the Managing Editor for Homeland Security Today. A veteran journalist whose news articles and analyses have run in dozens of news outlets across the globe, Bridget first came to Washington to be online editor and a foreign policy writer at The Hill. Previously she was an editorial board member at the Rocky Mountain News and syndicated nation/world news columnist at the Los Angeles Daily News. Bridget is a terrorism analyst and security consultant with a specialty in online open-source extremist propaganda, incitement, recruitment, and training. She hosts and presents in Homeland Security Today law enforcement training webinars studying a range of counterterrorism topics including conspiracy theory extremism, complex coordinated attacks, critical infrastructure attacks, arson terrorism, drone and venue threats, antisemitism and white supremacists, anti-government extremism, and WMD threats. She is a Senior Risk Analyst for Gate 15 and a private investigator. Bridget is an NPR on-air contributor and has contributed to USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, New York Observer, National Review Online, Politico, New York Daily News, The Jerusalem Post, The Hill, Washington Times, RealClearWorld and more, and has myriad television and radio credits including Al-Jazeera, BBC and SiriusXM.

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