Biden says he would stop border wall construction as president

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden said Wednesday that he would stop the construction of the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico if elected president, which would put an end to one of President Trump’s key campaign promises. 

“There will not be another foot of wall constructed in my administration,” the former vice president said in an interview during the virtual annual conference of the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.  

“I’m gonna make sure that we have border protection, but it’s going to be based on making sure that we use high-tech capacity to deal with it and at the ports of entry — that’s where all the bad stuff is at,” Biden added.

NPR’s Lulu Garcia-Navarro asked the candidate what he would do about the “land confiscations,” in which the federal government seizes land to build border protection, to which Biden responded, “End it.”

“End. Stop. Done. Over. Not going to do it. Withdraw the lawsuits. We’re out. We’re not going to confiscate the land,” he said.

In our #nabjnahj2020 interview, @JoeBiden promised that ‘not another foot of wall would be constructed” on the border. Watch our exchange: pic.twitter.com/rM9OgsYicU

— Lulu (@lourdesgnavarro) August 5, 2020

Stopping construction on the border wall would reverse one of Trump’s more high-profile promises to his supporters.

As of February, the U.S. had about 650 miles of barrier along the southern border, leaving 1,300 miles without a barrier, The Washington Post reported. In May, the administration reported building 194 miles of wall, but only 16 of those miles did not replace previous fencing.

Earlier this year, the Trump administration transferred $2.5 billion in funding that Congress had designated for defense and military issues in order to fund the wall.

The Supreme Court narrowly dismissed a call from advocate groups to order the administration to stop construction after a California court declared the reallocating of the funding to be illegal.