US Border Patrol agents held a groundbreaking event on Monday for a new "bollard-style wall" intended to replace roughly 20 miles of vehicle barriers along New Mexico's southern border.
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The Trump administration just released new photos of 'the president's border wall' — and it looks more like a fence
Construction crews broke ground Monday for a new "bollard-style wall" intended to replace about 20 miles of vehicle barriers along New Mexico's southern border.
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Though the replacement wall doesn't match the stature or complexity of the eight border-wall prototypes built in California, agents insisted to reporters on Monday that the bollard wall was the same one that President Donald Trump famously promised voters throughout his campaign.
"This is the beginning, in this sector, of the president's border wall, yes," Aaron Hull, the chief of the Border Patrol's El Paso sector, said at a press briefing.
Customs and Border Protection said the bollard wall replacement was being constructed as part of an executive order on border security that Trump signed shortly after taking office.
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Trump has run into numerous obstacles in constructing his wall — the most significant being Congress' reluctance to fund it.
Lawmakers in March shot down Trump's request to provide $25 billion for the wall, much to his annoyance. Instead, Congress supplied only $1.6 billion for border security and fencing similar to what already exists along the border.
Here's what the bollard wall looks like:
A 20-mile stretch along New Mexico’s southern border, near the Santa Teresa port of entry, is lined with a short vehicle barrier.
Customs and Border Protection said this particular sector had seen a high number of arrests related to illegal border-crossing and drug smuggling.
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In fiscal 2017, Border Patrol agents arrested 25,193 people on charges of crossing the border illegally. They also seized 34,189 pounds of marijuana and 140 pounds of cocaine.
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CBP awarded a construction contract in January to the Montana-based Barnard Construction, which has been tasked with removing the existing vehicle barrier and replacing it with the bollard wall.
Construction on the new wall is expected to take roughly 400 days and cost $73.3 million, which will come from 2017 Department of Homeland Security funding.
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Though reporters on Monday questioned whether the bollard wall was the one Trump had envisioned, Hull said it was "accurately described as a wall because it's a very serious structure."
Hull said the wall would be 18 feet, including a 5-foot anti-climbing plate at the top. He added that it would consist of concrete filled with rebar. It delves 6 feet into the ground with an additional 2 feet of concrete positioned below.
"It's very much a wall," Hull told one reporter, "and we're going to use it to stop illegal entries."
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