U.S. pauses plans for new border walls at Oceanfront Park

(KYMA, KECY/ AP News) - The Biden Administration has agreed to pause plans for a double border wall that critics say would effectively destroy a 51-year-old Oceanfront Park that symbolizes friendship between the United States and Mexico.

For decades, park visitors could easily converse between San Diego and Tijuana but access gradually diminished from the U.S. over the last 15 years and stopped entirely for more than two years.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus, who was also the former police chief in Tucson, Arizona, ordered the pause a week after friends of Friendship Park met with border patrol officials to ask for a 120-day halt to construction, which was expected to begin shortly.

This comes after last week, the administration said it was filling four gaps of an incomplete Trump-era wall in Yuma, which has become one of the busiest corridors for illegal crossings.