Amid border crisis, DHS says remaining wall funds will be prioritized for levee repair, soil erosion

The Department of Homeland Security on Friday announced that it would be prioritizing the scant remaining funds obligated to construction for the U.S. border wall for projects such as levee repair and soil erosion remediation. 

In a Friday press release outlining the agency's "plan for funds the previous administration was planning to use for construction of a border wall at the Southwest border of the United States," DHS said it would be terminating all projects that the Trump administration had bankrolled with the use of diverted funding. 

However, "Congress provided DHS with some funding for border barrier projects, which the agency is legally required to use consistent with their appropriated purpose," the agency admitted.

In deploying those funds DHS "will prioritize the remaining border barrier funds to address and remediate urgent life, safety, and environmental issues" related to the earlier border wall construction, the press release declared. 

Among those issues are repairs to "breaches in the Rio Grande Valley Levee System" as well as repair to "soil erosion in San Diego."

"DHS will also prioritize using the remaining funds consistent with their appropriated purposes for necessary clean-up of construction sites previously funded by the Department of Defense, including drainage, erosion control, site remediation, and material disposal," the press release continued.