Under Biden, Border Wall Construction Continues. It’s Just Called Something Else: A Podcast With Scott Nicol

Today, the United States has more border walls than it’s ever had in history, says Nicol.

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Border Militarization
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November 29, 2022
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Under Biden, Border Wall Construction Continues. It’s Just Called Something Else: A Podcast With Scott Nicol
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Between the state funded shipping container walls, and the Biden administration “filling in the gaps” of Trump’s border wall, it’s hard to tell what’s going on, exactly. What we do know is that border wall building under the current administration has not stopped, even if the Biden administration calls it something else. Scott Nicol is an artist, educator and environmentalist in South Texas who has advocated against border wall construction for years and is an expert on the subject. In this Border Chronicle podcast, Nicol talks about the current construction of wall in his community, which is being labeled as “levee repairs.” And he touches on other wall construction happening in other states despite President Biden’s promise during his campaign “that not another foot of wall” would be constructed during his administration.

An Army Corps of Engineers map showing new wall construction under the guise of levee remediation in the Rio Grande Valley, South Texas. (Courtesy FOIA, Center for Biological Diversity)
Border Wall construction site in South Texas on November 26, 2022 (Photo courtesy Scott Nicol)
Author
Melissa del Bosque

Melissa del Bosque is Co-founder and Executive Director of The Border Chronicle. Melissa has written about the U.S.-Mexico border since 1998 for various media outlets, including ProPublica, The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Texas Observer, and The Intercept.

Her work has been recognized with numerous U.S. and international journalism awards, including a Gabo Award and the Internacional Rey de España de Periodismo award, as the U.S.-Mexico investigations editor for Lighthouse Reports. In 2020, del Bosque received the RFK Human Rights Journalism Award as part of a ProPublica group reporting project “Inside the Border Patrol.” In 2016, she received the Hillman Prize for her investigative feature “Death on Sevenmile Road” about the militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2015, del Bosque’s four-part series with The Guardian on migrant deaths in South Texas won an Emmy and a National Magazine Award. 

Del Bosque is also the author of Bloodlines: The True Story of a Drug Cartel, the FBI and the Battle for a Horse-Racing Dynasty. She has a Master’s in Journalism from the University of Texas at Austin, a Master’s in Public Health from the Texas A&M School of Rural Public Health, and a Bachelor’s in poetry and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University.

In her spare time, Melissa loves to travel, spend time with her family, and explore the Sonoran Desert.

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