Originally published August 21, 2023 8:09 am PDT
Amidst efforts by Republicans to continue the border wall construction, the Biden administration has moved to auction off surplus border wall components, valued at millions of dollars.
Recent images show steel “square structural tubes” stored in an Arizona lot.
These tubes, designed as vertical supports for 30-foot border wall panels, were made available for purchase on GovPlanet, an online auction platform operated by Canadian company Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, according to a report from Fox News.
The Department of Defense’s logistics agency confirmed to media outlets Daily Upside and the New York Post that these tubes were “excess border wall materials that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned over to the DLA for disposition and are now for sale.”
It was reported by the Post that GovPlanet, a platform known for trading military surplus, has successfully auctioned 81 lots of these structural tubes, raking in about $2 million.
On average, these beams, each 28-foot-tall, were sold in batches of five at an average price of $212 apiece.
This culminated in earnings of $154,200 for 729 beams.
The GovPlanet site indicates that another 13 beams will be made available for bidding on August 23 and August 30.
A spokesperson from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) communicated to Fox News Digital, stating, “The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is disposing of the excess border wall materials in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation.”
They went on to add that “USACE has already transferred approximately $154 million worth of the roughly $260 million of bollard panels and other materials in accordance with standard excess property disposition procedures. USACE stands ready to implement a decision regarding disposition of the remaining materials.”
To provide context, former President Donald Trump reportedly invested $15 billion to put up 450 miles of barrier structures on the southern border.
When his term ended, an additional 250 miles was in the midst of construction.
President Biden, on assuming office, promptly halted the project, branding the border wall initiative as a “waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security,” Fox notes.
In contrast, Congressional Republicans have drawn attention to findings that reveal the Department of Defense has been incurring costs to the tune of $47 million annually, or $130,000 daily, merely for the storage of these residual border wall sections in the Southwest.
Recent data from Customs and Border Protection (CBP) suggests that the illegal immigration crisis is far from over, contradicting claims from the Biden administration.
Dan Stein, president of Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), stated, “Despite the happy talk coming out of the Biden administration, claiming that their policies have reduced illegal immigration, the July Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data show precisely the opposite.”
According to the figures Stein references, CBP encounters in July totaled 245,286, marking an increase from the 238,929 encounters in July 2022.
One of the most striking figures shared was the cumulative number of encounters over President Biden’s tenure.
“In the 30 months that President Biden has been in office, there have been 6.9 million CBP encounters and 1.7 million known gotaways,” Stein mentioned.
