Construction of the Trump administration U.S-Mexico border wall caused “irreparable” damage to natural resources, wildlife habitat, water flow and cultural sites—including blast damage to Native burial lands, erosion in protected federal property and diverted water sources that ended in flooding, a U.S. Government Accountability Office audit found.
In a rush to construct 450 miles of the barrier along the southern border, the Trump administration issued federal waivers that allowed the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security and its U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency, as well as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and U.S. Defense Dept., to override environmental and natural resource protection laws from January 2017 until January 2021, when newly inaugurated President Joe Biden halted all work, the 72-page GAO audit found. Billions of dollars in DOD and other agency funding were transferred to fund wall construction.