Updated:
President-elect Donald Trump called on President Joe Biden to stop selling unused portions of the border wall while Texas considers purchasing auctioned panels and giving them back to the new administration.
During a Dec. 16 press conference with reporters, Trump said he had spoken with Texas officials amid reports that remaining sections of the federal border wall were being auctioned off with bids starting at $5.
“We’re going to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on building the same wall we already have,” Trump said. “It’s almost a criminal act.”
Trump mentioned he had spoken with Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton about a potential restraining order.
“I’m asking today, Joe Biden, to please stop selling the wall,” Trump said.
Closing the border and deporting illegal immigrants were major campaign promises by Trump during the presidential race.
Under the Biden administration, almost 11 million illegal immigrants have entered the country, most at the U.S. southern border with Mexico.
Meanwhile, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has publicly criticized the Biden administration maneuver while announcing that Texas was ready to buy usable materials.
“I’ve got a billion dollars in my pocket to do it. I write the budget with Sen. Joan Huffman,” Patrick told Fox News’ Laura Ingram on Dec. 12. “We have the money. We’re going to have about $6 billion in our budget for border security; we’ll buy it.”
Patrick criticized the Biden administration in a Dec. 16 post on his X account for treating national security “as if it’s a yard sale” and that border wall materials were being auctioned off for pennies on the dollar.
“This isn’t just a fight against the incoming president—it’s a fight against the American people,” he wrote.
Patrick said he had spoken to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott concerning the sell-off of materials and that the state was monitoring the situation, in a Dec. 13 X post.
Abbott has consistently fought against open border policies under the Biden administration and claimed Texas has a constitutional right to defend itself from an “invasion” of illegal immigrants.
The Republican governor backed the creation of Operation Lone Star.
The multibillion-dollar program includes building a state border wall and placing barriers, such as razor wire, along the Texas–Mexico border to stop illegal immigration and drug and human trafficking.
Patrick said on the social media site that the Texas Facilities Commission (TFC), the agency that oversees the construction of the Texas border wall, had reviewed parts of the border wall in Arizona that were being auctioned off by GovPlanet, which specializes in government surplus.
TFC said the materials up for sale were “mostly junk, with most panels covered in concrete and rust,” according to Patrick’s post.
“There were a few panels that might be usable but not worth the cost of shipping to Texas from Arizona,” he wrote.
Patrick said that Texas would buy any panels that made “economic sense” and give them to Trump when he takes office.
“Gov. Abbott, the state legislature, and I all stand ready to help President Trump quickly secure our southern border,” he stated.
Francoise Luca, a spokesperson for TFC, said in an email to The Epoch Times that the agency had not purchased panels via the GovPlanet auction this month after the controversy began.
When asked if Texas would be reimbursed for any materials bought for the Trump administration, Luca said that would be a policy decision.
Luca told The Epoch Times that the agency had acquired panels in the past, but referred further questions to the agency website.
In February 2022, the Texas agency received about 1,700 metal surplus panels through the General Service Administration’s Federal Surplus Program (FSP).
TFC applied and qualified through the FSP to receive the donated panels, which were transported to Texas from California at a cost of $2 million for 246 truckloads of panels, according to the website.
The National Defense Authorization Act, signed on Dec. 22, 2023, allowed the federal government to donate or sell unused border wall pieces to states on the southern border, provided they are used to refurbish existing barriers, not install new ones.
Texas received its border wall panels noted on its website before the act was signed.
The Department of Defense said all the excess border wall material has already been distributed.
Most of the materials were provided to other federal agencies and state governments, and the rest were sold to GovPlanet.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
