Reportedly the Biden administration has been selling off millions of dollars worth of material from the border wall in a race against members of the GOP working to pass legislation to complete its construction.
Earlier this month, on a ‘for sale’ listing on Gov Planet, an online auction marketplace run by a Canadian Company, Ritchie Bros. Auctioneers, steel “square structural tubes” were photographed at an Arizona storage lot. The 28-foot-tall hollow beams are “excess border wall materials that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers turned over to the DLA for disposition and are now for sale,” said the Department of Defense’s logistics agency.
According to the New York Post, Gov Planet, which specializes in military surplus, has sold 81 lots of beams for about $2 million.
The beams, intended initially as vertical bollards in the border wall’s 30-foot-tall panels, were sold in five separate lots for an average of $212 each. Gov Planet made a net of $154,200 for 729 of them. According to the Gov Planet website, an additional 13 square structural tubes are set to be auctioned off on August 23 and 30.
“The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) is disposing of the excess border wall materials in accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulation,” said a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in an email to Fox News Digital Sunday. “USACE has already transferred approximately $154 million worth of the roughly $260 million of bollard panels an other materials in accordance with standard excess property disposition procedures. USACE stands ready to implement a decision regarding disposition of the remaining materials.”
Former President Donald Trump spent $15 billion to install 450 miles of barriers along the southern border with Mexico, with another 250 miles under construction when he left office.
The day President Joe Biden was sworn in, he stopped the project and denounced the border wall construction as a “waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security.”
GOP reps: Taxpayer border wall funding being wasted
Meanwhile, GOP representatives noted that an investigation found the Department of Defense has been spending $47 million a year, or $130,000 per day, to store the remaining border wall panels in the Southwest United States.
In May, Republican Senators Roger Wicker of Mississippi, ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Ted Cruz of Texas, and Joni Ernst of Iowa introduced the FINISH IT Act. The legislation would require the federal government to use unused but previously purchased border wall panels to extend the wall further along the southern border or transfer them to state governments — like Texas — to be used to construct the wall.
“This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” said Wicker, condemning the move as “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”
“The pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration,” said Republican Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma.
GOP Representative Elise Stefanik of New York denounced the first sale of parts for the border wall as “reckless.”
“Our borders continue to be overrun by an unprecedented number of illegal immigrants, turning every district into a border district and compromising our national security,” said Stefanik to the Post.
Republican Representative Juan Ciscomani of Arizona, whose district is where border wall parts are stored waiting for auction, criticized the president for his “refusal to act.”
“The federal government needs to be utilizing every tool in the toolbox to secure our border,” said Ciscomani. “Instead of putting these materials to their intended use, they have been squandered, first collecting dust in the desert and now being auctioned off.”
“President Biden has no regard for taxpayer dollars — or how his open border is bankrupting communities across the country that are footing the bill for his failures,” said GOP Representative Nicole Malliotakis of New York. The representative has been fighting to prevent migrants from being housed in New York City military sites and parks.
