US President Joe Biden defended on Thursday plans to extend the border wall with Mexico, saying he didn’t think such barriers worked but he was bound by laws introduced under Donald Trump.
Democrat Biden pledged during his White House race with Trump in 2020 that he would abandon the hard-right Republican’s signature policy and would not build any more of the wall.
But his own Department of Homeland Security on Thursday announced the building of a new section in southern Texas to tackle an “acute and immediate need”, as numbers of migrant crossings surge.
In a further development, the White House announced that it would restart deportation flights to Venezuela, one of the main countries of origin for the migrants.
Biden, who is polling neck-and-neck with rival Trump ahead of a likely 2024 rematch, insisted his predecessor had tied his hands on the wall-building.
“They have to use the money for what it was appropriated for. I can’t stop that,” he told reporters in the Oval Office.
He said the cash was earmarked for the border wall by the US Congress under Trump in 2019, and that lawmakers had since rejected his appeals to reassign the funds.
Asked if he thought the border wall was effective, Biden replied simply: “No.”
