DHS to build 20-mile wall along border in New Mexico
By Stephen Dinan - The Washington Times - Monday, April 9, 2018
Homeland Security began building a border wall in New Mexico on Monday, moving to replace vehicle barriers with a modern fence that will deter pedestrians attempting to cross in the remote desert west of El Paso.
The 20-mile project has been on the books for some time and the contract was awarded Jan. 22, meaning it was finalized before the recent fight over border wall money in the new 2018 spending bill.
But the administration says it wouldn’t have been built but for President Trump’s push for more border wall.
“We need effective barriers to deny the entry of illegal aliens and contraband,” said Aaron A. Hull, chief patrol agent for the El Paso Sector of the Border Patrol. “Our agents know that a balance of physical infrastructure, technology and personnel is key to securing the border and keeping our communities safe.”
The fence will begin just west of the Santa Teresa port of entry and run 20 miles west.
It will run between 18 and 30 feet high, and will be bollard-style construction, giving agents the ability to see through to Mexico so they have awareness of what’s going on, and can spot migrants or smugglers preparing for an attempt to jump the border. A see-thru design also helps agents spot and avoid potential ambushes by rock-throwers, which accounts for a large number of injuries to agents.
The New Mexico wall contract went to Barnard Construction, a Montana-based company. At $73 million, it works out to less than $4 million per mile of fencing — far cheaper than estimates for the rest of Mr. Trump’s wall, which is pegged at about $25 million per mile.
The area where the new fencing will be erected is currently protected by vehicle barriers, which amount to a single bar, about belt-high, held up by poles spaced several feet apart. They can hinder a car or truck barreling through the desert but do little to stop smugglers and illegal immigrants on foot.
Homeland Security officials said with Ciudad Juarez, a Mexican city of nearly 2 million people, so close to the spot, the vehicle barriers are no longer considered effective enough.
The barriers are a legacy of the Bush fence-building push of a decade ago. Originally Congress had ordered 700 miles of the border to be sealed with double-tier full-sized fencing, but the Bush administration balked and Congress backed off its demands, leaving decisions in the hands of Homeland Security.
The result was 354 miles of border protected by a pedestrian fence and 300 miles protected by vehicle barriers.
Now the Trump administration is going back to replace some of the vehicle barriers with the most up-to-date fencing.
The project will not use any of the designs Mr. Trump ordered last year.
Congress moved to block those designs from being used for building done pursuant to the 2018 spending bill. Border Patrol officials said last month they are still studying the bill to see what’s allowed.
The New Mexico project joins another wall replacement project in southern California that started last month.
Neither of those is part of the 100 miles or so of new and replacement wall Homeland Security says was approved in last month’s new spending bill.
“Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat, we need a wall,” Mr. Trump said at a Cabinet meeting Monday morning. “It will stop a lot of people we don’t want coming in this country.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news...er-new-mexico/
Border Patrol: Wall in New Mexico to be 'serious structure'
By: SUSAN MONTOYA BRYAN, Associated Press
Updated: Apr 09, 2018 09:35 PM EDT
A new wall being constructed along a 20-mile (32-kilometer) stretch of the U.S.-Mexico border in southern New Mexico as part of President Donald Trump's fight against drug trafficking and illegal immigration is being advertised as a "very serious structure" made of metal and concrete.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials gathered Monday to mark the groundbreaking of the $73 million project at Santa Teresa near New Mexico's state line with Texas. They say the new wall will be harder to get over, under and through.
The work to rip out the old vehicle barriers and replace them with the bollard-style wall is expected to take a little more than a year, but opponents are suing in an effort to stop the work.
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OUT WITH THE OLD
Gone will be the old post and rail barriers that are meant to stop vehicles but have been of little use against people trying to cross on foot. Aside from being easy to breach, U.S. Border Patrol officials say the existing barriers and mesh fencing are expensive and time consuming to repair.
In their place will be taller barriers that will provide a view through to the other side but will make it difficult for vehicles and people to pass.
The wall will stand at least 18 feet tall (5.4 meters) and could go as high as 30 feet (9.1 meters) depending on the undulating terrain. It will have a 5-foot (1.5 meter) metal plate at the top to discourage climbing.
The concrete will extend several feet into the ground and there will be more concrete below that to prevent people from digging under it. The design is similar to the existing wall that separates Sunland Park, New Mexico, and Anapra, Mexico.
"It's going to deter all but the most determined illegal entrants from entering the United States here," said Chief Patrol Agent Aaron Hull, who oversees the area.
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PRIME CORRIDOR
Only about one-third of the Southwest border has some kind of barrier, and border authorities have identified the El Paso Sector - the sprawling desert territory that spans part of West Texas and all of New Mexico - as an active smuggling route.
The priority within the sector is west of Santa Teresa, which Hull described as a prime corridor for running drugs and the busiest area for apprehensions of those suspected of entering the country illegally.
Agents in the El Paso sector arrested more than 25,000 immigrants suspected of crossing illegally and seized more than 34,000 pounds of marijuana and 140 pounds of cocaine during the last fiscal year.
While total border arrests dropped early in Trump's first year in office, the number climbed to 50,308 in March - up 37 percent from February and more than triple the same period last year.
Hull says agents will be able to better address the rising number of illegal crossings with the help of a more effective physical deterrent and technology.
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LEGAL BATTLE
Environmentalists have sued over the project, saying the federal government overstepped its authority in waiving laws as a way to speed construction.
A federal judge in San Diego recently sided with the Trump administration in a similar project involving waivers of environmental reviews for the replacement and construction of border wall prototypes in California. Reviews required under the National Environmental Policy Act and other dozens of other laws can create significant delays or even block construction.
An environmental advocacy group on Monday asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn the San Diego ruling and said Trump was trying to fulfill what they described as a "hateful political promise." The Center for Biological Diversity said it would argue that the waiver authority under a 2005 law has expired.
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra also appealed on Monday. A frequent critic of Trump, Becerra contended in his filing that the waiver authority expired and that the waivers were executive overreach under the U.S. Constitution.
U.S. Justice Department spokesman Devin O'Malley declined to comment on Monday's appeals.
http://www.wtrf.com/news/border-patr...ure/1110197244
