Four years after Texas governor Greg Abbott said his state would be the first to build its own wall on the border with Mexico, the project has been halted, the Texas Tribune reports.
Lawmakers decided to stop funding it at the end of the year’s legislative session on 2 June.
The future of the project is now in the hands of the federal government, but it would require $20bn over 30 years, according to the Tribune.
Legislators allocated $3.4bn for border security in the state budget, none of which will be for the wall. The money will primarily go to the Department of Public Safety and the National Guard, who are responsible for apprehending undocumented migrants.
Senator Joan Huffman, the lead budget writer, said the decision was taken because lawmakers felt border security was a federal issue.
“It should have always been a function of the federal government, in my opinion, and that wasn’t really being done,” she said.
The Republican-controlled legislature took the decision to halve the programme without holding a debate on it.
The Tribune reports that only 104km of the wall was completed by the state. This is only 8% of the 1,300km length that Austin intended to build, but three times the 34km built by the federal authorities during the first Trump administration.
The state’s effort to build the 10m-high barrier cost a total of about $3bn, meaning that it cost $29m per kilometre to construct.
The stretches of wall that have been built mostly cover ranches where the presence of agricultural workers means unlawful crossings are less likely to take place. The implication is that the state built the wall where it could acquire land, rather than where it thought there was a high risk of clandestine crossings – particularly in urban areas.
State officials have said segments under construction would continue being built, but no new projects would be started.
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