WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States will build additional barriers and roads in a Texas border area that has seen a large number of migrants crossing the border from Mexico, the government said on Thursday.
The Department of Homeland Security said it needed to waive a number of laws, regulations and other legal requirements “to ensure the expeditious construction of barriers and roads in the vicinity of the international land border in Starr County, Texas,” according to a post in the Federal Register.
The number of migrants caught crossing illegally or presenting themselves at legal border crossings has steadily risen after dropping in mid-May when the U.S. rolled out stricter new asylum rules.
The U.S. Border Patrol has encountered more than 245,000 people entering the United States in the Rio Grande Valley Sector in the current fiscal year, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in the post.
The building projects will be funded by a fiscal year 2019 appropriation for border barrier construction, he said.
“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,” Mayorkas said.
The increase has strained U.S. cities at the border and farther north. The mayor of Eagle Pass, Texas, declared a state of emergency last month due to a “severe undocumented immigrant surge” into the city as several thousand migrants reportedly arrived in recent days.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams on Thursday began a trip to Mexico, Colombia and Ecuador in which he will deliver a message to would-be migrants that his city cannot accommodate them.
(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
