OAN’s Roy Francis
1:58 PM – Saturday, August 19, 2023
The Biden administration has been selling away parts that were made and intended to be used to extend the southern border wall.
According to The New York Post, the unused parts of the border wall that the Biden administration has been quietly auctioning off are worth millions of dollars. Since April, GovPlanet, an online auction house which specializes in military surplus has sold over 80 lots of “square structural tubes.”
The parts that have been sold were intended to be used as vertical bollards in the border wall along the southern border. So far, the auction house has brought in around $2 million from the parts that have been sold.
The move by the Biden administration comes as the Senate passed a Republican-sponsored bill as part of its annual defense appropriation package which is aimed at forcing the president to stem the worsening migrant crisis at the southern border.
The Finish It Act would force the administration to extend the border wall, or send the unused material to border states, such as Texas, so they can put them to use along their southern borders.
Republicans have claimed that since President Joe Biden took office, around $300 million worth of taxpayer-funded wall parts have been left unused.
The bill’s sponsor, Senator Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) denounced the decision by the administration to auction the parts away labelling it as “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”
“This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” Wicker told The New York Post.
The GovPlanet website reportedly increased its sales efforts in May when the bill was first introduced, and again just days after the bill passed on a bipartisan vote.
An anonymous source from the auction website told the Daily Upside, a financial newsletter, that they are under instruction to not speak on the issue.
“We are legally not allowed to mention these are the border wall materials, or we could lose our jobs,” the source told the financial newsletter.
In 2021, the Biden administration was criticized for spending around $2 billion on storage costs and termination fees as he tried to cancel the contracts for the border wall that were agreed to under President Donald Trump.
Trump had spent around $15 billion during his presidency to install a total of around 700 miles of border wall after he promised to build “an impenetrable, physical, tall, powerful, beautiful southern border wall.”
On Biden’s first day in office he had cancelled the project calling it “a waste of money.”
As the border wall was cancelled, illegal immigrant surged across the open border. U.S. Customs and Border Protection documented around 1.7 million migrant encounters along the southern border in fiscal year 2021 and around 2.4 million in 2022.
All the proceeds that GovPlanet receives from auctioning off the border wall parts will be heading back towards the Pentagon’s budget.
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