Stabbed in the back’: Biden’s

border wall U-turn leaves

Indigenous and climate groups
reeling
Rio Grande communities feel like the ‘sacrificial lamb’ in a political war
as climate activists and environmentalists call foul

T he Biden administration’s decision to waive environmental,

public health and cultural protections to speed new border wall

construction has enraged environmentalists, Indigenous leaders and
community groups in the Rio Grande valley.
“It was disheartening and unexpected,” said Laiken Jordahl, a
borderlands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity
(CBD), amid concerns of the impact on essential corridors for wild cats
and endangered plants in the area. “This is a new low, a horrific step
backwards for the borderlands.”
This is the first time a Democratic administration has issued such
waivers for border wall construction, and for Joe Biden, it’s a marked
departure from campaign promises and his efforts to be seen as a
climate champion.

Biden criticized for waiving 26 laws in Texas to allow border wall

construction
Read more

“I see the Biden administration playing a strategic game for elections,”

said Michelle Serrano, co-director of Voces Unidas RGV, an
immigrants rights and community advocacy group based in the Rio
Grande valley. The many rural, immigrant and Indigenous
communities that live in the region have become “the sacrificial lamb”
for politicians looking to score points, she added.
As the climate crisis fuels ecological decline, extreme weather and mass
migration, the administration’s move is especially upsetting, she
added. “Building a border wall is counterproductive,” she said.
“This is an inhumane response to immigration,” said Michele
Weindling, the electoral director of the Sunrise Movement, a youth-led
climate justice group. “The right thing to do would be to treat
immigrants with compassion and address the root cause of what is
forcing people to have to leave their countries, which is the climate
crisis.”
Following the administration’s decision to approve the Willow drilling
project in Alaska and renege on a promise to end new drilling, the
border wall construction will likely further alienate young voters, she
said: “Biden has already caused distrust among young voters. This is
another and horrendous reversal of promises he made on the campaign
trail, which is a dangerous move to make ahead of 2024.”
Among the 26 environmental and cultural protections the administration is
waiving are the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act,
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and the American
Indian Religious Freedom Act.

The administration’s proposed 20 new miles of a “border barrier system” in

Starr county, Texas, cuts near the lower Rio Grande Valley national wildlife
refuge. Construction would bisect fields where the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe
and other tribes source peyote for sacramental use. It would also cut through or
near old village sites and trails.
“By developing this, they are furthering a genocide,” said Juan Mancias, the
chair of the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe, who has been battling border wall
construction though tribal cultural sites and graveyards through multiple US
administrations. Colonizers “killed our people in the first place, and we had to
bury – then you dig them up to build. It’s ongoing genocide”, he said.

The new sections of border wall would cut through “some of the most rural,
peaceful sections of the Rio Grande”, said Jordahl, who recently canoed down
the stretch of river where the administration plans its construction. “It was one
of the most serene experiences I have ever had on the border. There were orioles
flapping their wings in the sky, kingfishers, great blue herons.”

CBD believes the construction will set back the recovery of endangered ocelots,
and cut off wildlife corridors essential to the spotted wildcats’ long-term
survival. Two endangered plants, the Zapata bladderpod and prostrate
milkweed, would also be threatened by wall construction, according to the CBD.