he U.S. Department of Homeland Security is doing something prominent New Mexico politicians have opposed for years: building more border wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.
The Department is waiving 26 federal laws to finish a 20-mile stretch of wall in the Rio Grand Valley; it stopped construction there more than two years ago.
In a six-page filing with the Federal Register, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas defended the decision.
“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States in the project areas,” he wrote, citing sections of the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996.
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