AOC Furious After Border Wall Construction Set to Begin Again, Rages Against the 'Trumpy' Move
Infighting among Democrats often helps outsiders distinguish between the radical true believers and the merely transactional opportunists.
On Thursday, the administration of President Joe Biden announced that it would waive existing laws and regulations in order to construct “physical barriers” along the U.S.-Mexico border in Starr County, Texas.
Radical Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York denounced the move as “Trumpy” and urged Biden to “reverse course.”
The announcement from Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas cited an “acute and immediate need” to prevent further illegal crossings.
Acute and immediate indeed.
Mayorkas called the Border Patrol’s Rio Grande Valley Sector a point of “high illegal entry.” He added that by early August, Border Patrol agents already had “encountered over 245,000 such entrants” in that sector alone during the current fiscal year.
The DHS secretary used phrases such as “physical barriers” and “additional fencing,” but he could not bring himself to use the word “wall.”
Still, the extreme leftist Ocasio-Cortez responded with outrage over the new “physical barriers.”
“The Biden administration was not required to expand construction of the border wall — and they certainly were not required to waive several environmental laws to expedite the building,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a statement Thursday.
“The President needs to take responsibility for this decision and reverse the course,” she said.
— Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@RepAOC) October 5, 2023
A sampling of the more than two dozen federal laws suspended by Mayorkas’ waivers partly explains Ocasio-Cortez’s objections.
To construct a “physical barrier,” Mayorkas waived the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act, the National Wildlife Refuge System Administration Act and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, among many other laws pertaining to environmental, historical and cultural preservation.
According to Newsweek, the president has deflected responsibility.
“The money was appropriated for the border wall,” Biden said Thursday in reference to a 2019 appropriation.
“I tried to get to them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money,” he said. “They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”
Meanwhile, Mayorkas issued a separate statement insisting that nothing fundamental had changed with Thursday’s announcement.
“There is no new Administration policy with respect to border walls,” he wrote. “From day one, this Administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer.”
On that rhetorical point, at least, the Biden administration and Ocasio-Cortez agreed.
In addition to issuing an official statement, the congresswoman channeled her inner teenager by recording a video for social media.
“You could build a great big Trumpy wall on the entire U.S. southern border and it’s still not gonna fix this problem,” she said.
Here Ocasio-Cortez repeated an assertion contained in her written statement, where she insisted that the U.S. must “take examining the root of migration more seriously.”
In her video, she argued that U.S. foreign policy had contributed to the migrant crisis.
“And if we do not address the migrant crisis at its root, it is still going to continue to be a problem,” the congresswoman said.
AOC explains that walls don’t work and the U.S. is the reason why socialist countries in Latin America are poor pic.twitter.com/8cK0quLh8R
— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) October 5, 2023
The rift between Ocasio-Cortez and the Biden administration on this issue speaks volumes about our present situation.
For one thing, her “Trumpy” gibberish contained a logical fallacy that any eighth-grader would recognize.
Concede for a moment the congresswoman’s fantasy that U.S. foreign policy has impoverished socialist Latin America.
In that case, secure the border, and then change foreign policy. Neither objective would preclude the other.
Ocasio-Cortez, however, refuses to admit that people flee socialism because of socialism. Her stubborn adherence to a bankrupt ideology has convinced her that Americans should keep their borders open and suffer.
Meanwhile, neither Biden nor Mayorkas wanted to admit that a wall or a physical barrier or whatever they wanted to call it actually works. They could not afford to admit it thanks to radical true believers like Ocasio-Cortez.
The DHS secretary’s announcement, however, conceded the truth.
The Biden administration did not simply waive federal laws in order to construct “physical barriers” at the border. It waived environmental laws and laws pertaining to the preservation of Indian graves.
Clearly, then, Biden wants to have it both ways.
On one hand, he must something about a border crisis that his blue-state and “sanctuary” allies have begun to feel. Of course, he cares nothing for migrants or American citizens. Politics alone dictates his practical action.
On the other hand, the president must continue to say things liberals expect, such as “walls don’t work” and other nonsense.
Thus, we find Ocasio-Cortez the socialist true believer quibbling with Biden the transactional career politician.
No matter who wins that intraparty argument, Americans always lose with Democrats.
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