Thread: Stephen Miller Defends ‘Beautiful 30-Foot Rock Solid Bollard Steel’ Wall

ERECT whatever it takes to keep them out!

Grease up those bars on the fence so they cannot climb it!

Put sensors with LOUD BLASTING SIRENS THAT TRIGGERS FLASHING LIGHTS where we can!

Bury concertina wire under the fence!

We have a bazillion cars, RV's, semi's in the junkyards...dig a trench, stack those cars 4 high...build the fence on top! They need to be buried anyway!

Originally Posted by Judy

I like the 30 foot bollard steel wall. I prefer it, it's what Border Patrol wants and it's better for the environment and storm drainage.

You prefer it because that's all Trump can get built. What's going up now is a fence, not a wall. This type of fencing already exist, it's nothing new. Congress authorized no money for a wall, that was made very clear on the last appropriations bill. They didn't authorize anything more advanced than fencing that is already in place in some areas.

I will admit, it is easier to pass cartel drugs, weapons, and payoffs through a fence than it is the rebar reinforced concrete wall Trump promised during his campaign. Is that why some of the border patrol folks like it? Something to think about. Pass the payment through and let the illegals go to climbing. You've made it very clear in the past that there are plenty of border patrol agents taking payoffs from the drug cartels. Just saying .....

Oh, and for the record, it's not so much the fence that I have a problem with. It's the big lie that irks me! Don't piss on my pant leg and tell me it's raining and don't build what is and has always been a fence and insist it's a wall just to validate a campaign promise.

How quick we forget:

SPICER BLOWS UP AT A REPORTER FOR POINTING OUT THAT TRUMP’S WALL IS ACTUALLY A FENCE

Breitbart is not satisfied with Trump’s “tough-guy fencing thing.”




BY

• TINA NGUYEN

MAY 3, 2017 6:44 PM

Just call them “alternative walls”.
From A.P./Rex/Shutterstock.

It seems that White House press secretary Sean Spicer cannot make anyone happy—not journalists, liberals, or establishment Republicans, not to mention Jewish advocacy groups. Even Breitbart, the increasingly mainstream avatar of the movement formerly known as the alt-right, is upset with Spicer’s efforts to spin the Trump administration’s colossal border wall failure as a big, beautiful win for his nationalist-populist base.

During his daily press briefing on Wednesday, Spicer got into a heated back-and-forth with Breitbart’s White House correspondent, Charlie Spiering, after he asked whether the Trump administration had lied to the public when he promised to build a concrete wall along the southern border, only to downgrade his proposal to a series of fence-like boundaries. It was an issue gaining traction on Breitbart’s front page, where political editor Matthew Boyle had published a story the day before complaining about the porous-looking fences, and blasting the White House for seemingly caving to Democrats on last week’s negotiations over the budget, which ultimately did not include funding for the president’s wall.

“This is what exists right now throughout our country,” Spicer practically shouted, his face turning red as he fired up a slide show of current, insufficient-looking border fences. He then switched to a slide of the proposed walls that would be funded by the spending bill’s appropriations—which, Spiering pointed out, did not look like walls.

“Are those photos of fences or walls?” asked Spiering.

“There are various types of walls that can be built under the legislation that was just passed,” Spicer responded.

“That is a fence,” Spiering said.

“That is called a levee wall,” Spicer replied.

And thus commenced several minutes of Spicer and Spiering yelling at each other about fences versus walls, with Spiering at one point accusing Spicer of trying to sell the public on an “existing tough-guy fencing thing” instead of a real wall.

At issue is the definition of whether a “levee wall” or a “bollard wall” is more of a fence than a wall. These alternative walls, the press secretary’s office had explained to Breitbart the day before, were not specifically meant to keep out people but would have the same effect. The levee wall, placed along the Rio Grande, would prevent flooding and illegal migration, said deputy press secretary Lindsay Walters.(Neither Walters nor Spicer explained what a “bollard wall” is, but it certainly sounds imposing.)

After the spat, neither Spiering nor the Breitbart appeared satisfied with Spicer’s answer. “Spicer refused to describe his fence photos as Trump’s promised wall to supporters but assured them that it would be effective in protecting the border,” Spiering reported, adding that Trump had specifically promised a concrete wall built with rebar and steel, and mocking the “little toy walls” currently lining the border.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/05/sean-spicer-wall-versus-fence

April 5, 2018

Trump tweets photo of replacement fence, calls it 'Border Wall'

By Ed Straker

President Trump continues to erode his credibility, this time by tweeting a photo of a replacement fence and calling this the beginning of the construction of the "Border Wall."

Trump's words leave the impression that construction is underway for the border wall he promised, and that $1.6 billion is helping pay for it. That's not the case.

According to Los Angeles Times reporting, the photos Trump shared in his March 28 tweet about "the start of our southern border WALL" were for the replacement of an estimated 2.25-mile border wall in Calexico, Calif., built in the 1990s using recycled scraps of metal and old landing mat.

The Los Angeles Times quoted Jonathan Pacheco, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's El Centro Sector as having said earlier in March: "First and foremost, this isn't Trump's wall. This isn't the infrastructure that Trump is trying to bring in. ... This new wall replacement has absolutely nothing to do with the prototypes that were shown over in the San Diego area."

Conspiracy theorists believe that Trump has a secret plan to illegally divert military spending to build his wall. The tweet above should put this to rest. Trump clearly refers to his "wall" with a photo of a fence (a replacement fence). This is the "wall" he has promised.

It's hard to believe a president who has an adulterous relationship with the truth. Every time he demonstrates his lack of candor, he calls into question his other statements, such as his latest proclamation that he is going to send the National Guard to help the Border Patrol.

I'm reserving judgment on that until I see exactly how many National Guardsmen are sent there and what their responsibilities are. It may interest you to know that when George W. Bush was president, he deployed 6,000 National Guardsmen, only a quarter of the number deemed necessary, and illegal border crossings were reduced by only 24%.

If Trump commits the necessary resources to defend the border, I'll be the first to praise him. If he sends only a small number of Guardsmen for political theater, then it will be just another example of where the president's rhetoric has no relation to reality.

Ed Straker is the senior writer at Newsmachete.com.


Read more: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog...#ixzz5Zn8i6oVk
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The history lesson continues:

Has construction 'already started' on Trump’s border wall in San Diego?

By Chris Nichols on Tuesday, June 26th, 2018 at 2:45 p.m.



President Donald Trump reviews border wall prototypes, Tuesday, March 13, 2018, in San Diego. Evan Vucci / AP Photo

Amid chants of "Build the Wall!" at a recent rally in Nevada, President Trump repeated the claim that construction has "already started" on the border wall in California.

Here’s what Trump said, in context, at the Nevada rally on June 23, 2018:

"We have to have strong borders. We’re going to have the (border) wall. We’re gonna have the wall. We’ve already started it ....
(Audience cheers)

"We’ve already started it. You know, we started it in San Diego."
(Audience chants: "Build that Wall! Build that Wall! Build that Wall!")

"Now we’re gonna have the wall. And we started it. We have $1.6 billion. We’ve started it. We’re fixing it. And we’re building new. And we’re starting it. … We’re getting the wall built."

Has construction really started on Trump’s signature campaign promise: Building "a big, beautiful wall," on the U.S.-Mexico border?

Trump has made similar statements in the past. In this fact check, we’ll focus on his claim: "We’ve already started (the border wall). We started it in San Diego."

President Trump made his claim during a rally in Nevada on June 23, 2018.

Projects at the border

There are projects underway to replace fencing along the border in San Diego and further east in Calexico. Those call for new and taller, bollard-style barriers, which include a comb-like array of steel posts that border patrol agents can see through, some of which were planned long before Trump ran for office.

A recent appropriation by Congress of $1.6 billion allows for the replacement of the old fencing, but not for the construction of any sort of concrete wall prototype as Trump requested.

"The one thing we don’t fund is the one issue we all campaigned on — a border security wall — and that is not in the legislation," Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, founder of the House Freedom Caucus, said of the omnibus bill, according to an April article by FactCheck.org.

In San Diego, the project underway will replace 14 miles of scrap metal fencing that’s now eight-to-10 feet high with the bollard-style barrier.

That replacement will be 18-to-30 feet in height and include an anti-climbing plate, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release announcing the start of construction on June 1, 2018. The press release calls it the third "border wall construction project," which is misleading.

That’s because none of the projects that have already started will produce the solid, 30-foot high concrete barrier Trump promised during his 2016 presidential campaign. More specifically, they won’t include any of the eight border wall prototype designs ordered by the Trump administration.
"... this isn’t Trump’s wall"

The same goes for the 2.25-mile barrier replacement project east of San Diego in Calexico.

"First and foremost, this isn’t Trump’s wall," Jonathan Pacheco, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, which includes Calexico, told the Los Angeles Times in March 2018. "This isn’t the infrastructure that Trump is trying to bring in. … This new wall replacement has absolutely nothing to do with the prototypes that were shown over in the San Diego area."

Plans for the Calexico project, which also include a bollard-style structure, began in 2009 under the Obama administration and were funded in 2017, under Trump, according to the Times.

A spokesman for the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector said they could not specify when planning started for the San Diego project.

"These were funded under FY2017 so planning was before or during that time," Ralph DeSio, the agency’s San Diego-based spokesman, wrote in an email.

The White House did not respond to a request for evidence supporting the president’s statement.
The reality of what’s being built at these sites, and how it differs from Trump’s campaign promise, hasn’t stopped the president from distorting the facts.

In April, PolitiFact National rated Mostly False Trump’s similar statement: "We’ve started building the wall." It found Trump’s words "leave the impression that construction is underway for the border wall he promised, and that $1.6 billion is helping pay for it. That’s not the case."

It concluded that "it’s disingenuous to claim" the projects underway "amount to the border wall Trump has long promised."

Our ruling

President Trump recently claimed: "We’ve already started (the border wall). We started it in San Diego."

His statement gives the wrong impression that border fence replacement projects in California, including those in San Diego and Calexico, are the same as the solid, 30-foot-high concrete wall he promised during his run for president.

The $1.6 billion authorized by Congress for these projects does not allow for the construction of any sort of wall prototype requested by Trump.

Instead, the projects underway include arrays of steel posts, between 18 and 30 feet high, that allow border patrol agents to see through.

The planning for at least some of these projects, which will replace shorter scrap metal fencing, started long before Trump ran for office. Congress, however, agreed to pay for them under Trump’s administration.

We also grant that Trump at the Nevada rally added: "We’re fixing it. And we’re building new." This could be interpreted as a slight acknowledgement that the projects aren’t exactly what he promised, but they don’t add much clarity to what overall is a misleading statement.
We rate Trump’s claim Mostly False.

https://www.politifact.com/californi...ps-border-wal/

I prefer the looks and effect of the steel wall over the concrete wall, but whether it's steel or concrete, neither one are my preference. My preference was and is a Wall of Americans, 40,000 guards, 20 per mile, 6 per shift with 2 floaters for holidays and sick leave, on average That's my preference for border security and has always been. I've posted long detailed posts about this for almost 13 years, ever since they proposed and eventually passed the 2006 Fence Act. You might need more in some areas, less in others, and none in some extremely remote areas, but on average this should work very well.

The Wall of Americans would be federal employees, well-armed and equipped with handguns, long guns, high-powered binoculars, night goggles, and other types of weaponry, would be guards not patrols. Their job is to keep them out and make getting in a very unpleasant experience. They could easily be Marines and other Active Military as well. They don't rescue illegal aliens, they don't process illegal aliens, they don't take them to the hospital, they don't take them to border patrol offices, they don't administer first aid, they don't speak Spanish, only English, they don't give them food or water because they won't have it on hand to give, they keep them out of the country by any legal means, or if they get in, they capture them, tie them up and call Border Patrol to come pick them up to do whatever with.

You know this, you've opposed this every time I post it, because you thought it was too expensive. It would cost about $2.5 to $3 billion a year, a pittance compared to the cost of illegal immigration on our society, plus it's payrolls that recycle in our economy, creates 40,000 good jobs, and I think will work better and be more effective than a wall or fence. Walls in high traffic highly populated areas will probably work pretty well, at least slow them down, but in the less populated areas I think we need a Wall of Americans to actually guard the border whose legal assignment is to keep them out and make getting in and captured extremely unpleasant, uncomfortable and even dangerous, as it should be.

Trump’s ‘expanded’ Border Patrol is losing employees faster than it can hire new ones

Firm Awarded $297M Government Contract to Recruit 5,000 Border Agents Has Hired Only 2

POSTED 3:54 PM, DECEMBER 12, 2018,
BY CNN WIRE, UPDATED AT 08:14PM, DECEMBER 12, 2018


A patch on the uniform of a U.S. Border Patrol agent at a highway checkpoint on August 1, 2018 in West Enfield, Maine. (Credit: Scott Eisen/Getty Images)

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection hiring contract with a consulting firm was riddled with performance issues over the past year, including an inability of the firm to process quality candidates and provide promised technology, according to internal watchdog findings released Monday.

Ten months into the contract, the consulting firm, Accenture, had only “processed two accepted job offers,” but was paid $13.6 million in start-up costs and other expenses, the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General found.

In November 2017, CBP awarded Accenture a $297 million contract to help meet the hiring demands of an executive order on border security that President Donald Trump signed during his first week in office. The President’s directive called on CBP to “take all appropriate action to hire 5,000 additional Border Patrol agents.”

For years CBP has struggled to maintain its staffing numbers, let alone raise them by thousands.

“In its first year, CBP’s contract with Accenture has already taken longer to deploy and delivered less capability than promised,” wrote acting Inspector General John V. Kelly.

Stacey Jones, a spokeswoman for Accenture, said the company remains “focused on fulfilling our client’s expectations under our contract.” Jones directed CNN to reach out to CBP for further information regarding their work on the contract.

Issues with the contract come amid the backdrop of Trump’s mass deployment of more than 5,000 active duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to supplement CBP’s staffing and resources.

“For us, in this country, we keep America safe by proper application of the law,” a DHS official said in response to the IG report. “It’s a law enforcement mission. It’s not a military mission. It’s a law enforcement mission.”

The inspector general released its report as a “management alert” — reserved for issues that require immediate attention — after the watchdog received multiple hotline complaints related to the performance and management of the contract.

The CBP’s struggles with retention began around five years ago, when the demographics of illegal border crossings began to shift from single men to families and unaccompanied minors, creating new recruiting challenges for the department, according to a DHS official.

The official said that the negative press coverage surrounding the unaccompanied minor crisis in 2014 added to the agency’s staffing challenges.

The US Border Patrol, the CBP’s law enforcement arm at the US borders, has a statutorily established minimum staffing level of just over 21,370 agents, not including the additional request from the president.

Border Patrol staffing levels peaked in 2010 with 21,444 agents nationwide, down to 19,555 in 2018.

However, there was a net gain of 120 agents in 2018 — the first year that had had a net gain since 2013, according to CBP data.

“Hiring is not just anyone that can fill a uniform. It is extremely difficult to be a Border Patrol agent, and so we work really hard to get the right person for the job,” said the official. “You want to hire a lot of people, but you cannot reduce the standards.”

In order to keep up with retention and hire thousands of new agents and officers, CBP decided it would “have to start thinking outside the box, get some more innovative ideas,” said another DHS official.

When planning its hiring surge of thousands of additional personnel, CBP was grappling with two issues — how to build the right kind of hiring capacity and wanting a set of “fresh set of eyes” from outside of the government, the DHS official said.

“When we set this up, we knew that we were trying to be innovative. We were trying to open the aperture and try something new, so, ‘how can we in government really attack this problem differently?'” a DHS official said.

The inspector general, which initiated its review of the contract in July, found that Accenture was “nowhere near” satisfying its goal to hire 7,500 people over the next five years. And the internal watchdog concluded that CBP has “used significant staffing and resources” to help Accenture do its job.

“As such, we are concerned that CBP may have paid Accenture for services and tools not provided,” the inspector general wrote.

Additionally, the company claimed it would have the capability and capacity to perform all steps in the CBP hiring process with 90 days of the contract, but the company “has yet to demonstrate” an efficient or effective process, the inspector general found.

About a week ago, the CBP told Accenture to stop processing applications and think about the activities “where the return on investment really is positive,” a DHS official said.

Some steps in the hiring process are required to be done by a government official, such as the final decision on an offer, so it was necessary for Accenture to hand candidates back to the government for parts of the process, according to a DHS official. Officials found that the handoffs between the government and the private contractor became tedious and time consuming. And in the meantime, the government hiring center got to the point where it could handle the current applicant capacity, a DHS official said.

However, CBP was satisfied with Accenture’s digital marketing and advertising assistance as well as with the applicant care and support it provided, such as making phone calls to applicants during the process.

“We have more work to do here. We have more work to do in terms of figuring out exactly how we are going to do this with Accenture going forward,” said the official.

Accenture also came under internal fire last month, when an employee petition circulated urging the company to cancel its contract with the Trump administration, Bloomberg reported.
“The technology we provide is sold in the name of efficiency, but all we see is technology supercharging inhumane and cruel policies,” the petition stated, according to Bloomberg.

Accenture’s Jones said, “we welcome the feedback from our people and are aware of the posting on our internal blog site. An important part of our culture is that we encourage all our people to have a dialogue about issues that arise in the workplace and beyond.”

Other technology companies have faced similar internal backlash, often over the administration’s immigration and border policies.

The CBP concurred with all of the recommendations made by the inspector general, although it disagreed with some of the watchdog’s conclusions.

“They raised issues and concerns that we ourselves had, that we’re managing, and that’s why we concurred with all their recommendations,” said a DHS official.

Despite the ups and downs with the contract, CBP has lowered the average time it takes to get an applicant hired from more than a year to nine months, according to a DHS official.

CBP is also starting to see evidence that the way it is targeting applicants is “getting a higher percentage of applicants who are qualified to get through the system,” the official said.

There were times when CBP had to have 200 applicants to produce one Border Patrol agent, but the number of applicants is down to about 75 for each hire, according to the official.

Additionally, in last couple months, the number of applicants per month has gone up even though it’s a time of year when the number typically goes down, the official said.

https://ktla.com/2018/12/12/firm-awa...ired-only-two/

Originally Posted by MW

Oh, and for the record, it's not so much the fence that I have a problem with. It's the big lie that irks me! Don't piss on my pant leg and tell me it's raining and don't build what is and has always been a fence and insist it's a wall just to validate a campaign promise.

Exactly! I don't care what they build as long as it keeps everyone out just build something!

It is the lie---lie---lie---do nothing that I have a huge problem with.

There is absolutely no excuse for all this do nothing and all the lying. NONE!

Go into a meeting with Chuck and Nancy shortly after saying "they have been stopped" is a perfect indication he isn't serious about doing anything. Asking for 5 billion, only gets 1.6---why didn't he ask for FULL funding 2 years ago. You don't start a negotiation at the bottom dollar, you start high. You don't say "they have been stopped" then ask for funding!

Originally Posted by MW

The history lesson continues:

Has construction 'already started' on Trump’s border wall in San Diego?

By Chris Nichols on Tuesday, June 26th, 2018 at 2:45 p.m.



President Donald Trump reviews border wall prototypes, Tuesday, March 13, 2018, in San Diego. Evan Vucci / AP Photo

Amid chants of "Build the Wall!" at a recent rally in Nevada, President Trump repeated the claim that construction has "already started" on the border wall in California.

Here’s what Trump said, in context, at the Nevada rally on June 23, 2018:

"We have to have strong borders. We’re going to have the (border) wall. We’re gonna have the wall. We’ve already started it ....
(Audience cheers)

"We’ve already started it. You know, we started it in San Diego."
(Audience chants: "Build that Wall! Build that Wall! Build that Wall!")

"Now we’re gonna have the wall. And we started it. We have $1.6 billion. We’ve started it. We’re fixing it. And we’re building new. And we’re starting it. … We’re getting the wall built."

Has construction really started on Trump’s signature campaign promise: Building "a big, beautiful wall," on the U.S.-Mexico border?

Trump has made similar statements in the past. In this fact check, we’ll focus on his claim: "We’ve already started (the border wall). We started it in San Diego."

President Trump made his claim during a rally in Nevada on June 23, 2018.

Projects at the border

There are projects underway to replace fencing along the border in San Diego and further east in Calexico. Those call for new and taller, bollard-style barriers, which include a comb-like array of steel posts that border patrol agents can see through, some of which were planned long before Trump ran for office.

A recent appropriation by Congress of $1.6 billion allows for the replacement of the old fencing, but not for the construction of any sort of concrete wall prototype as Trump requested.

"The one thing we don’t fund is the one issue we all campaigned on — a border security wall — and that is not in the legislation," Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, founder of the House Freedom Caucus, said of the omnibus bill, according to an April article by FactCheck.org.

In San Diego, the project underway will replace 14 miles of scrap metal fencing that’s now eight-to-10 feet high with the bollard-style barrier.

That replacement will be 18-to-30 feet in height and include an anti-climbing plate, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection news release announcing the start of construction on June 1, 2018. The press release calls it the third "border wall construction project," which is misleading.

That’s because none of the projects that have already started will produce the solid, 30-foot high concrete barrier Trump promised during his 2016 presidential campaign. More specifically, they won’t include any of the eight border wall prototype designs ordered by the Trump administration.
"... this isn’t Trump’s wall"

The same goes for the 2.25-mile barrier replacement project east of San Diego in Calexico.

"First and foremost, this isn’t Trump’s wall," Jonathan Pacheco, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, which includes Calexico, told the Los Angeles Times in March 2018. "This isn’t the infrastructure that Trump is trying to bring in. … This new wall replacement has absolutely nothing to do with the prototypes that were shown over in the San Diego area."

Plans for the Calexico project, which also include a bollard-style structure, began in 2009 under the Obama administration and were funded in 2017, under Trump, according to the Times.

A spokesman for the Border Patrol’s San Diego Sector said they could not specify when planning started for the San Diego project.

"These were funded under FY2017 so planning was before or during that time," Ralph DeSio, the agency’s San Diego-based spokesman, wrote in an email.

The White House did not respond to a request for evidence supporting the president’s statement.
The reality of what’s being built at these sites, and how it differs from Trump’s campaign promise, hasn’t stopped the president from distorting the facts.

In April, PolitiFact National rated Mostly False Trump’s similar statement: "We’ve started building the wall." It found Trump’s words "leave the impression that construction is underway for the border wall he promised, and that $1.6 billion is helping pay for it. That’s not the case."

It concluded that "it’s disingenuous to claim" the projects underway "amount to the border wall Trump has long promised."

Our ruling

President Trump recently claimed: "We’ve already started (the border wall). We started it in San Diego."

His statement gives the wrong impression that border fence replacement projects in California, including those in San Diego and Calexico, are the same as the solid, 30-foot-high concrete wall he promised during his run for president.

The $1.6 billion authorized by Congress for these projects does not allow for the construction of any sort of wall prototype requested by Trump.

Instead, the projects underway include arrays of steel posts, between 18 and 30 feet high, that allow border patrol agents to see through.

The planning for at least some of these projects, which will replace shorter scrap metal fencing, started long before Trump ran for office. Congress, however, agreed to pay for them under Trump’s administration.

We also grant that Trump at the Nevada rally added: "We’re fixing it. And we’re building new." This could be interpreted as a slight acknowledgement that the projects aren’t exactly what he promised, but they don’t add much clarity to what overall is a misleading statement.
We rate Trump’s claim Mostly False.

https://www.politifact.com/californi...ps-border-wal/

I can see that you are very distressed. Is it because you're afraid Trump will get credit for the big beautiful steel wall at least the portions he got funded? Why is that an issue for you? If you want a wall, which apparently you do, why wouldn't a big tall 30 foot high steel bollard wall be okay with you? Do you own stock in a concrete company, is that why you don't like the steel wall? Do you not understand the word wall in our language? Is that the problem?

I remember you totally supported the 2006 Fence Act, so it's a little disturbing to me that you won't support this big beautiful American-made bollard steel wall Trump is putting up to replace and extend that useless ugly piece of garbage that has proven itself to be a complete waste of US taxpayer money that you totally supported in 2005 and 2006.