Barrier Touted by Trump as Part of Border Wall Completed

A new border fence replacement that President Trump has touted as the first part of his promised wall with Mexico has been completed. The project in Calexico, California, used an estimated $18 million of the total $1.6 billion Congress has approved for border construction to replace more than two miles of a barrier erected in the 1990s. The replacement barrier has been hailed as a success in the Trump administration’s border wall efforts despite the fact that the only similarity it has to Trump’s border wall prototypes is its height of 30 feet. The new barrier is “a solid first step in strengthening our border security posture,” Gloria Chavez, chief of the El Centro sector of the U.S. Border Patrol, was quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times. While Trump’s campaign pledge for a full-fledged border wall has so far been stymied due to lack of funding, the Department of Homeland Security has recently begun classifying improvements on old structures as part of a “border wall” and “border wall system.”