- Texas appropriated approximately $1 billion in funding for the construction of a border wall.
- Gov. Greg Abbott said many Texas landowners along the border are donating their property for the wall.
- The Texas wall comes after Biden paused all federal border wall construction projects.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott traveled Saturday to Starr County on the US-Mexico border to launch the construction of a border wall funded by $1 billion in state appropriations and $54 million in private donations, the Texas Tribune reported.
The Texas wall follows an executive order issued by President Joe Biden on his first day in office that paused federal border wall construction and called for a review of the projects. Biden went on to cancel multiple border wall contracts.
The lack of progress on the border wall prompted Abbott, a Republican, to take matters into his own hands, announcing plans in June to build a wall along Texas's southern border without funding from the federal government.
"While Biden does nothing, we are stepping up to protect our communities," Abbott said in a tweet Saturday. "The Lone Star State is securing the border."
—Greg Abbott (@GregAbbott_TX) December 18, 2021
The engineering firm Posillico Civil Inc., which was awarded a $162 million contract from the Texas Facilities Commissioners in November, had installed 880 feet of barrier by Saturday afternoon, according to the Tribune.
In an interview with Fox News on Friday, Abbott said some of the construction crew enlisted for the project previously worked on the Trump administration's border wall, but added his wall will be built at a faster pace than the former president's.
"There are so many large landowners on the border who are so fed up with the Biden administration they are allowing Texas to build the border wall on their property," Abbott told host Tucker Carlson. "We have 100 miles or so of land that's being donated to the state of Texas for us to build the wall to better secure our border."
From deploying National Guard soldiers to repurposing shipping containers into a makeshift border wall, Abbott has authorized additional support in an effort to increase border security over the last several months. In September, he signed a nearly $1.8 billion border security bill into law, which earmarked $750 million for the border wall project.