Congress' official watchdog says in a report that the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border under former President Donald Trump toppled untold numbers of saguaro cactuses in Arizona, put endangered ocelots at risk in Texas and disturbed Native American burial grounds
The construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border under former President Donald Trump toppled untold numbers of saguaro cactuses in Arizona, put endangered ocelots at risk in Texas and disturbed Native American burial grounds, the official congressional watchdog said Thursday.
“What makes Trump’s border wall so egregious is that his administration waived dozens of environmental, public health, cultural preservation and even contract procurement laws to build it,” said U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, a southern Arizona Democrat who requested the GAO review. “Before construction even started, communities, tribes and other stakeholders were raising the alarm about the colossal damage that bypassing such fundamental protections would have.
“We applied a commonsense, balanced approach in an effort to address environmental concerns while prioritizing our main goal of securing the nation’s border to reduce a vast set of complex threats from entering the U.S.,” said Mark Morgan, who was Customs and Border Protection’s acting commissioner during the Trump administration.
“We hope this report will help people understand the degree of destruction the wall truly inflicted,” said Laiken Jordahl, Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, among the groups consulted. The border stretches across nearby 2,000 miles along California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. Sections of what Trump called his “big, beautiful wall” were installed between January 2017 and January 2021 by contractors for U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the Department of Defense.For the report, the GAO consulted with the federal agencies, as well as the nongovernmental environmental groups.
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