The Biden administration has announced that it will cancel another batch of border wall construction contracts along the southern border. The latest cancelation targets contracts underway in the Laredo and Rio Grande Valley Sectors of the southern border.

The Department of Homeland Security shared that the funds will instead be used for environmental planning including “biological, cultural, and natural resource surveys” around the border region.

In its statement released last Friday, the administration urged Congress to cancel any funding allocated for the remaining border wall construction. Instead, they called on Congress to use remaining funds for more innovative security measures including border technology and modernizing and securing the ports of entry along the border.

While the Biden administration has previously canceled contracts in the Laredo Sector, this latest cancellation will cover roughly 44 miles of the border. In July, the administration canceled two contracts along the Rio Grande Valley that covered 31 miles.

The latest news has been criticized by Republicans, but for some landowners at the border, the news is welcome. One landowner, Pamela Rivas, shared with CNN that she was “thrilled” that she would not have to undergo what would likely be a long and expensive battle to keep her land. During Trump’s initial implementation of his border wall project, the federal government battled against private landowners who would ultimately have to deal with the border wall cutting through their private property.

When Biden took office in January, one of his first initiatives was pausing the border wall construction that was set in place by his predecessor. Under the Trump Administration, border wall contracts ramped up in order to rebuild parts of the border wall as well as install new portions of the border wall.

In May of 2019, the Army Corps of Engineers awarded two contracts totaling $788 million to replace nearly 100 miles of fencing. Just months in, those two contracts were later increased to a total of $1 billion in funding. A year after the initial reward, the funding had more than tripled to $3 billion.

A ProPublica review showed that border wall contracts often started with an initial award only to have the award increase within months or even weeks after they were agreed upon. Even with the high cost, border construction was slow and time-consuming. Since construction started in 2017, roughly 450 miles of barrier has been built with only 52 new miles of construction. Much of the contracts remain unfulfilled, and this latest move by the Biden Administration put a stop at least for now at any further attempts to complete the wall.

After Biden stopped construction of the border wall, many Republicans were critical of his administration's efforts toward the border wall. In a report titled “President Biden is Wasting Billions by Not Building the Border Wall," subcommittee ranking member and Oklahoma Senator James Lankford said that Biden’s halt on construction has resulted in roughly $2 billion of wasted taxpayers dollars. The report echo’s Republican criticism that contracts have been paid for, yet workers are getting paid not to work. “The Federal government is paying contractors on these seven projects $3 million per day to drive out to project sites and guard the unused pallets of steel and other construction materials,” the report reads. To date, roughly $100 million of border wall material including steel panels are sitting at the southern border without any intention of being used.

After the administration announced these recent cancellations of contracts, Lankford expressed his disapproval. He shared in a tweet, “Leave it to Biden and his team to cancel border contracts for ‘environmental reasons’ when we have a 21-year high of illegal crossers.” Lankford adds, “It is obvious that they do not want to stop illegal immigration.”