BORDER/DHS/MEXICO/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/WALL: “Along a dusty stretch of border, flanked by an outlet mall and farmland, a giant crane hoisted a 30-foot-high section of steel barrier and dropped it into a shallow trench last Wednesday [2-28-18].
The structure was one of the first new pieces of a border wall put in place since the start of a lengthy construction project in February just west of the border crossing in downtown Calexico, a small, mostly Hispanic farming town.
The construction isn’t part of President Donald Trump’s long-promised wall with Mexico. Instead, the barrier is a replacement project first proposed by the U.S. Border Patrol in 2009 under the Obama administration, roughly a decade after the original fencing went up, according to David Kim, the Border Patrol’s assistant chief patrol agent in the area.
By mid-October, roughly 2 miles in the Border Patrol’s El Centro sector, which stretches for about half of the Mexican border in California, will have the new, see-through barrier.
Mr. Kim said the roughly $18 million project was funded by Congress last year. He said the project happens to be getting under way in the midst of Mr. Trump’s continuing effort to build a wall along the Mexican border.”
-Alicia A. Caldwell, “New Barriers to Replace Aging Border Wall in California,” The Wall Street Journal online, Mar. 4, 2018 07:00am