The Biden administration is quietly selling parts intended for extending the wall along the southern border, according to a report from The New York Post. 

An online auction house called GovPlanet has sold over 80 steel parts originally intended for the border wall, making around $2 million since April. More lots will be auctioned off later this month as some critics say Biden is getting rid of the unused parts before House Republicans can pass a bill requiring they be used to extend the border wall, according to the Post.

Last month, the Democrat-controlled Senate passed its defense appropriations package that included a Republican-sponsored bill aimed at forcing the Biden administration to address the border crisis by extending the wall. Republican senators blasted the Biden administration for selling the parts for an extended border wall as illegal immigrants flood across the southern border. 

“The pennies made from selling the border wall will not be enough to pay the families who suffer from a criminal act committed by someone who crossed our open borders during the Biden administration,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-OK).

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who co-sponsored the bill known as the “Finish It Act,” told the Post that Biden’s move was “outrageous, behind-the-scenes maneuvering.”

“This sale is a wasteful and ludicrous decision by the Biden administration that only serves as further proof they have no shame,” Wicker said. 

The Post reported that the GovPlanet auction schedule picked up significantly in May after Wicker introduced the Finish It Act and increased again days after the Senate passed the defense package. House Republicans must pass a matching version of the bill before it becomes law. 

Republicans said that around $300 million in taxpayer-funded border wall parts have been abandoned since Biden became president. Money from the sale of the unused border wall parts reportedly goes back to the Pentagon. 

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In a report earlier this month, a GovPlanet source told The Daily Upside, “We are legally not allowed to mention these are the border wall materials, or we could lose our jobs. But that’s what they are – 110 percent.”

Since President Joe Biden took office, illegal immigrants have crossed into the U.S. in record numbers with estimates exceeding five million. According to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, there have been 1,973,092 southwest land border encounters so far in the fiscal year 2023, which began in October. 

A Maui land company said its request for water to help fight the wildfire that raged last week on the island was delayed during critical hours by a state agency that first had to consult with local farmers. 

The West Maui Land Company, which manages agricultural and residential subdivisions and water jurisdictions, alleged in a letter sent to Hawaii Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM) Deputy Director Kaleo Manuel that the government agency delayed its request for hours and by the time the request was granted, it was too late, Fox News reported. The death toll from the fires hit 111 and included children, but much of the burn area still needs to be searched as hundreds of people remain missing. 

Glenn Tremble of the West Maui Land Company said he made the initial request for the state agency to divert water from streams on August 8 as the fire spread through the town of Lahaina, but hours went by before he heard anything, according to CNN. 

“We anxiously awaited the morning knowing that we could have made more water available to (the fire department) if our request had been immediately approved,” Tremble wrote in the letter. “We cannot know whether filling our reservoirs at 1:00 p.m. (as opposed to not at all) would have changed the headlines when dawn broke… We know that we need to act faster during an emergency.”

Manuel was criticized earlier this week for past comments on “water equity” as a resurfaced clip spread on social media showing the deputy director discussing how water “requires true conversations about equity.”  

“My motto has always been: let water connect us, not divide us,” Manuel says in the clip. “We can share it, but it requires true conversations about equity.”

M. Kaleo Manuel, the Hawaiian official in charge of water resources is under fire for refusing to divert water from streams and release it to quell the raging Maui fires explains that water must never be used, but revered. pic.twitter.com/fc5lqZGS0Z

— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) August 17, 2023

The state’s website says Manuel “has focused on bringing planning and indigenous knowledge to the fields of water advocacy and management in Hawai‘i.” 

The West Maui Land Company blasted CWRM in the letter, writing, “We are all devastated. No one is happy there was water in the streams while our homes, our businesses, our lands, and our lives were reduced to ash.” 

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Manuel has been reassigned to a different division, according to a press release from the Hawaii Department of Land and Natural Resources, which insisted that the reassignment was not for anything he did wrong, Fox News reported. 

“DLNR is re-deploying First Deputy of the Commission on Water Resource Management (CWRM), Kaleo Manuel, to a different DLNR division,” the press release said. “The purpose of this deployment is to permit CWRM and the Department to focus on the necessary work to assist the people of Maui recover from the devastation of wildfires.”

“This deployment does not suggest that First Deputy Manuel did anything wrong. DLNR encourages the media and the public to avoid making judgments until all the facts are known.”

Hawaiian Electric is also under scrutiny for allegedly slow-walking modernization and repairs of its electrical grid as it devoted resources to building out the utility’s green energy network. The state attorney general said it will use a third party to investigate how state and local government agencies responded to the devastating fires.