Late last week, the Dept. of Homeland Security announced it is completing a border wall section located near Yuma, Arizona, where the U.S. Border Patrol is managing the third-busiest corridor along the border, an ABC News story said.
That announcement comes after Joe Biden vowed as a candidate he would end border wall construction and followed through on that promise once he entered the White House.
Federal agents have apprehended more than 160,000 illegal aliens in the area in 2022, ABC News said. After riding a bus to the Mexican town of Algodones, the illegals walk by foot across the ledge of a dam and step onto U.S. soil, where they are taken into custody and released into the U.S.
According to the federal government’s reasoning for the head-spinning announcement, the section is being completed for “safety” reasons because illegal aliens can slip and fall off the dam or drown in the nearby Colorado River.
Reacting to the announcement, Ira Mehlman of the Federation for American Immigration Reform says there is a more realistic reason: politics.
“[President Biden] wants to keep Mark Kelly in the Senate,” Mehlman says, referring to the first-term Arizona Democrat who is seeking re-election in November.
In fact, the primary is today, August 2, in Arizona, where Kelly is running unopposed for the Democrat nomination but will face a Republican in November. So the DHS announcement came five days before Arizona’s primary election.
Kelly’s name is mentioned in the ABC News story, too, which points out he is seeking re-election and has “pressed” the Biden administration to fix Yuma's border wall.
In the GOP primary, candidate Blake Masters is favored to win the nomination but a four-poll compilation at RealClearPolitics shows Kelly with a 13% lead over Masters.
After defeating incumbent Martha McSally in 2020, Kelly was elected to finish the term of the late John McCain, who was famous for criticizing walls and fencing as "ineffective." Faced with a primary challenge in 2010, McCain famously ran a tough-talking TV ad that called for completing the "danged fence."
