Rep. Colin Allred flipped his position on building more barriers and sections of walls on the southern border after the Biden administration announced it would waive federal laws to expedite construction.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said his agency would be resuming construction of many new sections of the border wall to address the historic surge of unlawful migration, as reported by The Dallas Express.
Allred (R-TX) is currently running in the Democratic primary to challenge incumbent Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) in the upcoming 2024 senatorial election.
During his 2018 campaign for his seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, Allred unequivocally denounced the idea of border walls, calling any effort by then-President Donald Trump to build barriers at the border racist.
“I wanna briefly talk about this racist wall,” Allred said, per the Texas Scorecard. “The symbol of this country cannot be a fence with barbed wire on top of it. It has to remain the Statue of Liberty.”
“I’ll tell you what. If they build that wall, my generation will be the one that tears it down,” he promised. “We will not have this in this country. We will not have this wall in our country.”
“We are not going to waste billions of dollars on a racist campaign promise, and we are not going to turn the symbol of this country into a wall with barbed wire on top of it,” he concluded.
Allred changed his tune after Secretary Mayorkas’ announcement.
“This is a necessary step to help Texas’ overwhelmed border communities deal with this current surge of migrants,” Allred told ABC. “I have long said that targeted physical barriers have a role to play in securing our border at high traffic areas, but this is only a partial solution.”
“What our state really needs is comprehensive immigration reform, including adequate funding for border security personnel and technology,” he continued. “Unlike Ted Cruz, I won’t use the border as a backdrop for photo-ops and political safaris. I will work across the aisle to find long-lasting solutions to fix our immigration system in a way that reflects our values and meets the needs of our economy.”
A campaign spokesperson for Cruz’s reelection bid told The Dallas Express, “Colin Allred has actively advocated for tearing down the border wall and recently voted to block federal funds from supporting Operation Lone Star.”
“He continues to show Texas voters that his priority is not to protect them from the ongoing crisis, but to continue worsening it at their expense,” the campaign concluded.
Allred voted to bar any federal taxpayer money from supporting Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security efforts as the situation at the southern border continues to escalate amid historic numbers of unlawful migrants have crossed into Texas.
As reported by The Dallas Express, Abbott recently deployed a special operations group from the Texas Department of Public Safety to reclaim a border island in the Rio Grande that had been a longtime hub for gunmen allegedly associated with Mexican drug cartels.