In a bid to speed up construction of President Donald Trump’s long-promised border wall, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced that it would waive regulations regarding procurement laws.
In an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf said that the department had waived regulations before but mostly regarding environmental regulations.
“Congress has given the Department authority to waive a number of laws and regulations when it comes to building border barriers and border roads. The department has used that authority 21 times. Mostly waiving environmental regulations and laws. Today we are going to start waiving those for procurement regulations and laws as well.”
"Today, we are going to start waiving those for procurement regulations and laws, as well. It allows to us speed up a lot of our contracts that the Army Corps has," Wolf says on Fox. "We hope that will accelerate some of the construction that is going along the Southwest border."
— Lucas Tomlinson (@LucasFoxNews) February 18, 2020
The AP notes that former President George W. Bush waived regulations five times during his tenure. Trump has issued waivers 16 times thus far.
The move to issue more waivers for border wall construction comes less than a week after the Pentagon announced that it would reprogram $3.8 billion — initially intended for the production of new fighter jets and the national guard — for border wall construction.
As Politico notes, the re-allocation of funds brings the total that the Defense Department has contributed to border wall construction to $10 billion since last year.
That move is likely to meet resistance in Congress where House Democrats vowed to “complain about it” but noted that unless Republicans break from Trump it is unlikely they will be able to prevent the reprogramming of the funds.
The DHS said it expects to build roughly 94 miles of border wall by the end of the year. That still puts the amount of completed wall well below the administration’s target.
An examination of the amount of wall built conducted by The Washington Post found that by late January, the Trump Administration had built roughly 110 new miles of walls since the beginning of Trump’s time in office.
To meet the administration’s goal for wall construction of 450 miles, the Post says construction crews would have to build about 30 miles of wall per month — or over twice the current pace.
