then Add to Home Screen.
President Joe Biden ended the declaration of national emergency on the southern border as one of his first acts as president, saying the action, which was declared by former President Donald Trump in February 2019, was unwarranted and a “waste of money.”
Biden said no more U.S. taxpayer dollars would be diverted to construct a border wall that had been a key campaign promise during Trump’s successful 2016 run for president. Biden is also directing a review of all resources appropriated or redirected to build the wall.
A presidential proclamation released Jan. 20 called for a pause in construction and obligation of funds “as soon as possible but in no case later than seven days from the date of this proclamation.”
Officials must also work to develop a plan to redirect funds that had been set aside for the wall and repurposing contracts with private contractors engaged in wall construction.
National Guard equipment funds had previously been used in part to fund the wall without widespread support from Congress. The reprogramming efforts, which drained more than $1 billion from the Guard last year, were controversial, drawing criticism from Republicans and Democrats as well as NGAUS and other military advocacy groups.
The Pentagon cited the national emergency in reprogramming the dollars. They included fiscal 2020 appropriations that would have replaced or modernized old equipment, including $790 million in the National Guard and Reserve Equipment Account, $100 million for retooling Humvees and $169 million for new C-130J Super Hercules aircraft.
The larger border mission also put the Guard in a funding pinch. In 2019, the then chief of the National Guard Bureau warned that some drill weekends could be canceled due to the cost of the mission, which had drawn hundreds of millions of dollars from Guard training accounts.
The mission is now being conducted under Title 10, a purely federal status.
Defense officials told Military Times the president's decision to end the border emergency has no direct impact on other DoD support to the border mission. There are currently more than 3,000 troops, mostly from the National Guard, deployed in support of border officials.
