Texas stops providing new funding for border wall construction
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas has stopped putting new money toward building a U.S.-Mexico border wall, shifting course after installing only a fraction of the hundreds of miles of potential barrier that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott set out to construct four years ago.
State lawmakers this month approved a new Texas budget that does not include continued funding for the wall, which had been a multibillion-dollar priority for Abbott as part of a sprawling immigration crackdown. He even took the unusual step of soliciting private donations for construction, saying in 2021 that many Americans wanted to help.
On Tuesday, Abbott's office said President Donald Trump's aggressive efforts to curb immigration allowed the state to adjust.
The halt in funding was first reported by The Texas Tribune.
'Thanks to President Trump's bold leadership, the federal government is finally fulfilling its obligation to secure the southern border and deport criminal illegal immigrants," Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said. 'Because of these renewed federal assets in Texas, our state can now adjust aspects of state-funded border security efforts.'
The state has completed 65 miles (104 kilometers) of border wall since construction began. The Texas border with Mexico is roughly 1,200 miles (1,931 kilometers).
The wall has gone up at a slow pace as the state has navigated the drawn-out process of buying private land and confronting local opposition in some places. Abbott announced plans for the wall at a time when large numbers of migrants were showing up at the border, saying in 2021 that he believed a combination of state-owned land and volunteered private property would "yield hundreds of miles to build a border wall.'
The number of migrant crossings has fallen dramatically this year.
'There was no need for it in the first place,' said Scott Nicol, a board member for Friends of the Wildlife Corridor, a habitat preservation group in the Rio Grande Valley. He has criticized the wall as ineffective.
"The only thing that's changed is the political dynamic,' he said.
The new budget approved by Texas lawmakers allocates about $3.4 billion for border security for two years. That amount will not be used to build out new projects for the wall and instead go to the Texas Department of Safety and the Texas National Guard, the main agencies responsible for Operation Lone Star, Abbott's key immigration program launched in 2021 during the Biden administration.
The money allocated for border security is nearly half the $6.5 billion that was dedicated to immigration efforts the last time lawmakers earmarked the state budget two years ago.
Funds previously allocated for the wall will allow work on it to continue through 2026 and 'will set the federal government up for success,' said Republican Sen. Joan Huffman, the lead budget writer in the state Senate.
The agency responsible for constructing the wall has about $2.5 billion remaining in funding to cover up to 85 additional miles (135 additional kilometers) of the wall by 2026, according to a statement made in April by Texas Facilities Commission executive director Mike Novak, whose agency is overseeing construction of the project.
'This wall should have never been built, it's useless,' said Bekah Hinojosa, co-founder of the South Texas Environmental Justice Network. "It divides our community.'
___
Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
37 minutes ago
Brazil auctions off several Amazon oil sites despite environmentalists and Indigenous protests
BRASILANDIA, Brazil -- BRASILANDIA, Brazil (AP) — Brazil auctioned off several land and offshore potential oil sites near the Amazon River on Tuesday as it aims to expand production in untapped regions despite protests from environmental and Indigenous groups. The event came months before Brazil is to host the U.N.'s first climate talks held in the Amazon. The protesters outside Tuesday's venue warned of potential risks that oil drilling poses to sensitive ecosystems and Indigenous communities in the Amazon. A luxury Rio de Janeiro hotel hosted the auction conducted by the National Oil Agency. Most of the 172 oil blocks for sale are located in areas with no current production, such as 47 offshore locations close to the mouth of the Amazon River and two sites inland in the Amazon near Indigenous territories. Nineteen offshore blocks were awarded to Chevron, ExxonMobil, Petrobras and CNPC. The oil companies see the area as highly promising because it shares geological characteristics with Guyana, where some of the largest offshore oil discoveries of the 21st century have been made. This region is considered to have high potential risk due to strong currents and the proximity to the Amazon seashore. Under public pressure from President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the Brazilian Institute of the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources, known as IBAMA, approved an emergency plan allowing state-run Petrobras to conduct exploratory drilling in a block near the mouth of the Amazon River, the last step to grant an environmental license. 'It's regrettable and concerning that blocks are being acquired in a basin that has not yet received environmental licensing,' Nicole Oliveira, executive director of the environmental nonprofit Arayara, which tried to block the auction in court. 'This is an irresponsible move by the National Oil Agency and a very risky one for the companies involved," Oliveira told The Associated Press. "We will continue litigating to prevent the contracts from being signed and the blocks from being explored.' The auction wrapped up with only 34 oil blocks awarded. Brazil´s oil agency noted that the signing bonuses — one-time payments made by the winning companies — totaled $180 million, a record for auctions of this kind. An agency representative said the highest premium was for a block located near the mouth of the Amazon River, which drew a nearly 3,000% markup. Oliveira took part in a peaceful protest that gathered about 200 people outside the auction site, from environmentalists to Indigenous leaders. 'We came to Rio to repudiate the auction,' said Giovane Tapura of the Manoki, an Amazon tribe. 'We would have liked to be consulted and to see studies on how the oil drilling could affect us. None of this has been done.' In a recorded opening statement at the start of the event, Brazil's National Oil Agency said the auctions are part of the country's energy diversification strategy aimed at transitioning to a low-carbon economy and that contracts signed with the winning companies include measures to reduce carbon intensity in production activities, as well as mandatory investments in energy transition projects. Brazil has increased crude oil production, which became the country's top export for the first time last year, surpassing soybeans. The auction is part of the federal government's goal to maintain and even expand output beyond 2030, when production from current oil blocks under exploration is expected to decline. Brazil gets most of its electricity from hydropower and other green energies. The U.N. climate talks will be held in the city of Belem, close to the mouth of the Amazon. Critics say it's a contradiction that Brazil's president is pushing for increased fossil fuel production while trying to cast himself as an environmental champion. Claudio Angelo, head of international policy at Climate Observatory, a coalition of 133 environmental, civil society and academic organizations, told reporters ahead of the auction that Brazil is both undermining its own standing ahead of the climate talks and undermining climate protection efforts. 'The Brazilian government is endangering everyone's future since science has been crystal clear about the need to stop the expansion of fossil fuels everywhere in the world," he said. ___ ___
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Argentines reel from health care cutbacks as President Milei's state overhaul mirrors Trump's
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) — To outsiders, the Facebook group chat reads like a snarl of nonsensical emojis and letters. To uninsured Argentine cancer patients, it's a lifeline. The surreptitious network connects advocates who have spare drugs to Argentines with cancer who lost access to their treatment in March 2024 when President Javier Milei suspended a federal agency, known as DADSE, that paid for their expensive medications. Whenever Facebook cracks the coded pleas and removes the group for violating its rules on drug sales, another appears, swelling with Argentines who say they've grown sicker since the radical libertarian president took a chainsaw to health care. 'All I need for my body to function is this medication, and Milei is saying, 'There's no money,'' said Ariel Wagener, a 47-year-old pizza chef with leukemia who was hospitalized this year with failing kidneys after losing access to his medication. Without DADSE, a month's worth of his leukemia drug costs $21,000. Wagener's condition stabilized after he got leftover medication via Facebook, donated by a family whose loved one had died of cancer. The halting of millions of dollars of free cancer drugs is just one way Milei's austerity drive has torn through the public health system that once set Argentina apart in Latin America, ensuring that health care was free for pretty much everyone who couldn't afford private insurance. Since taking office in December 2023, Milei has slashed Argentina's health care budget by 48% in real terms. His administration fired over 2,000 Health Ministry employees, including 1,400 over just a few days in January. As part of Milei's plan to remake Argentina's troubled economy and cut waste and bureaucracy, officials gutted the National Cancer Institute, suspending early detection programs for breast and cervical cancer. They froze federal funds for immunization campaigns, hobbling vaccine access as Argentina confronts a measles outbreak for the first time in decades. They dismantled the National Directorate for HIV, Hepatitis and Tuberculosis, leading to testing and treatment delays. They defunded emergency contraception and stopped distributing abortion pills. 'We're seeing setbacks we haven't seen in decades,' said María Fernanda Boriotti, president of Argentina's Federation of Health Professionals. "HIV patients without treatment, cancer patients dying for lack of medication, hospitals without resources, health professionals pushed out of the system." The government curtailed medical coverage for retirees and lifted price controls on prescription medication and private health plans, causing prices to spike by 250% and 118% respectively, official data shows. 'We've stopped buying milk, yogurt, anything that's not absolutely essential,' said Susana Pecora, 71, who lost the insurance plan that covered her husband's antipsychotic drugs when the price jumped 40% last year. Milei and Trump see eye-to-eye Milei campaigned on a promise to shrink the state two years before President Donald Trump and Elon Musk took up their own chainsaws. The Argentine has become a close ally of the Trump administration, including on health policy. Argentina has followed the U.S. out of the World Health Organization, and last month received a visit from U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Meeting Kennedy in Buenos Aires, Argentine Health Minister Mario Lugones announced a review of Argentina's health system to align it with Kennedy's Make America Healthy Again movement. 'We have similar visions about the path forward,' Lugones said of Kennedy. Milei has not yet attempted to replace universal coverage with an insurance-based system, as he vowed on the campaign trail. But in stripping Argentines of coverage and increasing premiums and out-of-pocket expenses, he is moving Argentina closer to the U.S. model, said Macarena Sabin Paz, health team coordinator at Argentina's Center for Legal and Social Studies. 'We are beginning to see the idea ... where if you lose your job, or become seriously ill, you may have to sell your car, whatever you have, to pay for health care," she said. Milei's staffing cuts have eviscerated agencies tasked with planning, financing and tracking immunization campaigns, disrupting data collection and jeopardizing the country's respected childhood vaccine program. The cuts have coincided with a measles outbreak that in April led to Argentina's first measles death in two decades. 'Argentina has been one of the most advanced South American countries and here we see it abandoning public health,' said Dr. Stanley Plotkin, an American physician who helped develop the measles vaccine in the 1960s. Milei's spokesperson, Manuel Adorni, did not respond to requests for comment. Lugones also did not respond to questions on the impact of policy changes. A tidal wave of cuts After decades of unbridled spending by left-wing populist governments that brought Argentina infamy for defaulting on its debts, Milei delivered on his campaign promises of taming extreme inflation and notching a fiscal surplus. But even experts who agree Argentina's health care system needed reform say the cutbacks have been so deep and fast that they've hit like a tidal wave. 'In terms of the destruction of the state, we've never experienced anything like this, not even during the military dictatorship,' said Fabio Nuñez, ex-coordinator of the National Directorate for HIV, Hepatitis and Tuberculosis who was among hundreds fired from the agency. Charged with leading prevention efforts and treatments for infectious diseases, the agency has lost 40% of its staff and 76% of its annual budget. Hospitals now face shortages of everything from virus testing supplies to medications to condoms. The cuts have coincided with a surge in sexually transmitted infections. Last year HIV cases spiked by 20% and syphilis by 50%. 'They're avoiding the expense now but will pay for it later as people seek emergency care,' said Cristian Pizzuti, a 31-year-old with HIV who documented 103 cases of patients deprived of their daily antiretroviral pills for weeks at a time last year. Pizzuti said he recently received expired medication and suffered a severe allergic reaction after being switched to a cheaper drug. Tuberculosis cases also climbed by 25% last year. TB clinics report delays in obtaining test results. 'As people go about their lives, waiting for results, they are spreading the disease to others,' said Dr. Santiago Jimenez, who treats HIV and TB patients in an impoverished Buenos Aires neighborhood. "It's an epidemiological disaster.' Hospitals under strain Free public hospitals have become flooded with Argentines who dropped their private insurance due to increased premiums or who lost their job — and with it, their social security plans funded through payroll contributions. Buenos Aires facilities reported a 20%-30% increase in demand in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the same period last year. The strain was visible at the free public Rodolfo Rossi Hospital in La Plata last month, where crowds jostled in the outpatient clinic and long lines spilled from the pharmacy. Pharmacists have reported drug shortages as mass layoffs caused administrative chaos and the government froze a program that provided basic medications to Argentine public health centers. Silvana Mansilla, 43, spent half the day waiting to pick up her monthly supply of thyroid medication — which has doubled in price to $22 — only to find the hospital had run out. 'Where's the government? What are they doing about this?' she asked. With hiring frozen, doctors said they're handling double the patient load. Overwhelmed by ever-increasing workloads, Argentina's leading public Garrahan Pediatric Hospital in Buenos Aires has hemorrhaged 200 medical professionals since Milei took office. As annual inflation neared 200% last fall, their salaries lost half of their purchasing power. Doctors left for jobs abroad or better-paying work in private clinics. None were replaced. Medical residents ran a weeklong strike in May, displaying their pay slips for a month of 70-hour work weeks: $700. Waiting for treatment A lawsuit filed by patient advocacy groups said more than 60 cancer patients have died due to the government's suspension of the DADSE medication program, and over 1,500 patients were waiting for their drugs. A federal judge ordered the government to reinstate the drug deliveries, but it appealed, arguing that DADSE no longer exists. It said it had created a new, more efficient program to fulfill outstanding requests. But the timeline varies and sometimes the drugs don't come at all. Timing was everything for patients like Alexis Almirón. His medical records show the government drug bank received his request for an expensive medication to shrink his malignant tumor on Dec. 11, 2023, the day after Milei's inauguration. His doctor told the agency immediate treatment was urgently needed for the aggressive cancer. Months passed. His mother, Claudia Caballero, bombarded DADSE with desperate calls asking what was taking so long as Almirón's lymphoma spread from his neck to his brain and stomach. He vomited blood. He lost his eyesight. Caballero tried to crowd-source the $20,000 for a month's supply of the drug but couldn't raise enough. On March 12 last year, Almirón died at 22. 'They didn't give him the chance to choose to live,' Caballero said, her voice breaking.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Firms led by US military veterans deliver aid in Africa and Gaza, alarming humanitarian groups
ON A PLANE OVER UPPER NILE STATE, South Sudan (AP) — Swooping low over the banks of a Nile River tributary, an aid flight run by retired American military officers released a stream of food-stuffed sacks over a town emptied by fighting in South Sudan, a country wracked by conflict. Last week's air drop was the latest in a controversial development — private contracting firms led by former U.S. intelligence officers and military veterans delivering aid to some of the world's deadliest conflict zones, in operations organized with governments that are combatants in the conflicts. The moves are roiling the global aid community, which warns of a more militarized, politicized and profit-seeking trend that could allow governments or combatants to use life-saving aid to control hungry civilian populations and advance war aims. In South Sudan and Gaza, two for-profit U.S. companies led by American national security veterans are delivering aid in operations backed by the South Sudanese and Israeli governments. The American contractors say they're putting their security, logistics and intelligence skills to work in relief operations. Fogbow, the U.S. company that carried out last week's air drops over South Sudan, says it aims to be a 'humanitarian' force. 'We've worked for careers, collectively, in conflict zones. And we know how to essentially make very difficult situations work,' said Fogbow President Michael Mulroy, a retired CIA officer and former senior defense official in the first Trump administration, speaking on the airport tarmac in Juba, South Sudan's capital. But the U.N. and many leading non-profit groups say U.S. contracting firms are stepping into aid distribution with little transparency or humanitarian experience, and, crucially, without commitment to humanitarian principles of neutrality and operational independence in war zones. 'What we've learned over the years of successes and failures is there's a difference between a logistics operation and a security operation, and a humanitarian operation,' said Scott Paul, a director at Oxfam America. ''Truck and chuck' doesn't help people,' Paul said. 'It puts people at risk.' 'We don't want to replace any entity' Fogbow took journalists up in a cargo plane to watch their team drop 16 tons of beans, corn and salt for South Sudan's Upper Nile state town of Nasir. Residents fled homes there after fighting erupted in March between the government and opposition groups. Mulroy acknowledged the controversy over Fogbow's aid drops, which he said were paid for by the South Sudanese government. Shared roots in Gaza and U.S. intelligence Fogbow was in the spotlight last year for its proposal to use barges to bring aid to Gaza, where Israeli restrictions were blocking overland deliveries. The United States focused instead on a U.S. military effort to land aid via a temporary pier. Since then, Fogbow has carried out aid drops in Sudan and South Sudan, east African nations where wars have created some of the world's gravest humanitarian crises. Fogbow says ex-humanitarian officials are also involved, including former U.N. World Food Program head David Beasley, who is a senior adviser. Operating in Gaza, meanwhile, Safe Reach Solutions, led by a former CIA officer and other retired U.S. security officers, has partnered with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a U.S.-backed nonprofit that Israel says is the linchpin of a new aid system to wrest control from the U.N., which Israel says has been infiltrated by Hamas, and other humanitarian groups. Starting in late May, the American-led operation in Gaza has distributed food at fixed sites in southern Gaza, in line with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's stated plan to use aid to concentrate the territory's more than 2 million people in the south, freeing Israel to fight Hamas elsewhere. Aid workers fear it's a step toward another of Netanyahu's public goals, removing Palestinians from Gaza in 'voluntary' migrations. Since then, several hundred Palestinians have been killed and hundreds more wounded in near daily shootings as they tried to reach aid sites, according to Gaza's Health Ministry. Witnesses say Israeli troops regularly fire heavy barrages toward the crowds in an attempt to control them. The Israeli military has denied firing on civilians. It says it fired warning shots in several instances, and fired directly at a few 'suspects' who ignored warnings and approached its forces. It's unclear who is funding the new operation in Gaza. No donor has come forward, and the U.S. says it's not funding it. In response to criticism over its Gaza aid deliveries, Safe Reach Solutions said it has former aid workers on its team with 'decades of experience in the world's most complex environments' who bring "expertise to the table, along with logisticians and other experts.' South Sudan's people ask: Who's gett ing our aid drops? Last week's air drop over South Sudan went without incident, despite fighting nearby. A white cross marked the drop zone. Only a few people could be seen. Fogbow contractors said there were more newly returned townspeople on previous drops. Fogbow acknowledges glitches in mastering aid drops, including one last year in Sudan's South Kordofan region that ended up with too-thinly-wrapped grain sacks split open on the ground. After gaining independence from Sudan in 2011, South Sudan has struggled to emerge from a civil war that killed nearly 400,000 people. Rights groups say its government is one of the world's most corrupt, and until now has invested little in quelling the dire humanitarian crisis. South Sudan said it engaged Fogbow for air drops partly because of the Trump administration's deep cuts in U.S. Agency for International Development funding. Humanitarian Minister Albino Akol Atak said the drops will expand to help people in need throughout the country. But two South Sudanese groups question the government's motives. 'We don't want to see a humanitarian space being abused by military actors ... under the cover of a food drop," said Edmund Yakani, head of the Community Empowerment for Progress Organization, a local civil society group. Asked about suspicions the aid drops were helping South Sudan's military aims, Fogbow's Mulroy said the group has worked with the U.N. World Food Program to make sure 'this aid is going to civilians.' 'If it wasn't going to civilians, we would hope that we would get that feedback, and we would cease and desist,' Mulroy said. In a statement, WFP country director Mary-Ellen McGroarty said: 'WFP is not involved in the planning, targeting or distribution of food air-dropped' by Fogbow on behalf of South Sudan's government, citing humanitarian principles. A 'business-driven model' Longtime humanitarian leaders and analysts are troubled by what they see as a teaming up of warring governments and for-profit contractors in aid distribution. When one side in a conflict decides where and how aid is handed out, and who gets it, 'it will always result in some communities getting preferential treatment,' said Jan Egeland, executive director of the Norwegian Refugee Council. Sometimes, that set-up will advance strategic aims, as with Netanyahu's plans to move Gaza's civilians south, Egeland said. The involvement of soldiers and security workers, he added, can make it too 'intimidating' for some in need to even try to get aid. Until now, Western donors always understood those risks, Egeland said. But pointing to the Trump administration's backing of the new aid system in Gaza, he asked: 'Why does the U.S. ... want to support what they have resisted with every other war zone for two generations?' Mark Millar, who has advised the U.N. and Britain on humanitarian matters in South Sudan and elsewhere, said involving private military contractors risks undermining the distinction between humanitarian assistance and armed conflict. Private military contractors 'have even less sympathy for a humanitarian perspective that complicates their business-driven model," he said. 'And once let loose, they seem to be even less accountable.'
