Tag Archives: border wall

The El Paso Times reports: Perhaps the quickest way around a billion-dollar wall is over it. Smugglers in Juárez have engineered camouflage hook-and-ladders made of rebar that blend in so well with the border wall that it can be hard to detect, according to U.S. Border Patrol. The ladders are the same rust brown color as the mesh panels or …

The Hill reports: The Pentagon is moving $3.8 billion from various weapons programs such as the F-35 fighter jet to pay for President Trump’s southern border wall, according to a notice sent to Congress on Thursday. The notice sent to Congress said the money is going toward the “support of higher priority items” and is “required to provide support for …

The Arizona Republic reports: The contractor that is building President Donald Trump’s border wall in southwestern Arizona began blasting this week through a site that the Native American O’odham people consider sacred to make way for newer, taller barriers. U.S. Customs and Border Protection confirmed the contractor started blasting through the site called Monument Hill at Organ Pipe Cactus National …

This morning it was storm winds, now it’s storm water: President Trump’s border wall likely will require the installation of hundreds of storm gates to prevent flash floods from undermining or knocking it over, gates that must be left open for months every summer during “monsoon season” in the desert, according to U.S. border officials, agents and engineers familiar with …

CNN reports: Newly installed panels from the US border wall fell over in high winds Wednesday, landing on trees on the Mexican side of the border. The area is part of an ongoing construction project to improve existing sections of the wall. Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump is preparing to divert an additional $7.2 billion in Pentagon funding for border wall construction this year, five times what Congress authorized him to spend on the project in the 2020 budget, according to internal planning figures obtained by The Washington Post. The Pentagon funds would be extracted, for the second year in a row, …

The New York Times reports that Trump officials remain vague about fulfilling his oft-repeated promise to complete 450 miles of new wall by 2021: The administration has thus far built only 93 miles of the new wall, nearly all of it on federal land where dilapidated barriers existed or vehicle barriers once stood, according to Customs and Border Protection. The …

The Washington Post reports: A federal judge in El Paso on Tuesday blocked the Trump administration’s plan to pay for border barrier construction with $3.6 billion in military funds, ruling that the administration does not have the authority to divert money appropriated by Congress for a different purpose. The Trump administration was planning to use those funds to build 175 …

The Guardian reports: The construction of a private border wall partially funded by rightwing allies of Donald Trump continued with vigor in south Texas this week, seemingly in blatant violation of a court injunction ordering work to be suspended. On Thursday and Friday, within three days of a temporary restraining order being issued, the Guardian found construction crews with at …

The Desert Sun reports: A video taken by a Mexican citizen shows the newly replaced border fence in Mexicali being scaled by two men with a rope ladder, one of whom makes it over to the United States. The 38-second video shows a pair of men climbing the ladder while another holds it on the Mexico side of the border. …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump has made his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, the de facto project manager for constructing his border wall, frustrated with a lack of progress over one of his top priorities as he heads into a tough reelection campaign, according to current and former administration officials. The president’s son-in-law and senior adviser is pressing U.S. Customs and …

The Washington Post reports: Jared Kushner and other senior Trump administration officials are planning to set up web cameras to live-stream construction of President Trump’s border wall, going against objections from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and senior U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials, according to four people familiar with the White House proposal. “There will be a wall …

Politico reports: After years of touting the impenetrability of a border wall, President Donald Trump said Saturday that “you can cut through any wall” as reports surfaced of smugglers sawing through newly erected barriers with readily available power tools. “We have a very powerful wall. But no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything, in all fairness. But we …

The Washington Post reports: Smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage. The breaches have been made using a popular cordless …

The Hill reports: President Trump early Thursday morning sought to clarify remarks he made regarding his long-promised wall along the southern border, saying he was only kidding when he mentioned that a barrier was being constructed along the non-border state of Colorado. Trump sparked mockery from several Democratic lawmakers Wednesday night after telling a crowd at the Shale Insight conference …

The Louisville Courier-Journal reports: In Eastern Kentucky’s Red River Gorge area, an 18-foot replica of President Donald Trump’s border wall is being scaled not only by experienced mountain climbers, but by novices and young children. One climber even scaled it while juggling. “You don’t tell a climber that something can’t be climbed or that it’s impossible,” said Rick Weber, the …

From the climbing aficionado site Rock & Ice: Many in the climbing community were amused a couple weeks ago when our POTUS held a press conference at a section of his latest border wall design—a series of parallel square steel posts with a 5-foot-high plate at the top. “Impossible to climb,” he stated. He boasted that “the federal government tested …

Mediaite reports: According to the forthcoming book Border Wars, by New York Times reporters Julie Hirschfeld Davis and Michael Shear, Trump — on Dec. 18, 2018 — was irate after seeing the Drudge headline: “USA Giving $4.8 Billion to Mexico.” And the president went on to dress down the aides who convinced him to make the agreement with the country. …

The Washington Post reports: President Trump told aides last year he wanted U.S. forces with bayonets to block people from crossing into the United States across the Mexico border, one of several proposals he floated at moments of peak frustration with his inability to contain a migration surge, according to current and former administration officials involved in those discussions. Trump …

The New York Times reports: Privately, the president had often talked about fortifying a border wall with a water-filled trench, stocked with snakes or alligators, prompting aides to seek a cost estimate. He wanted the wall electrified, with spikes on top that could pierce human flesh. After publicly suggesting that soldiers shoot migrants if they threw rocks, the president backed …