Texas’s state border wall with Mexico just got “ten feet taller”, as Trump might say, as Texas Governor Gregg Abbott has ordered that the barbed wire fence between Texas and Mexico in the El Paso area be reinforced with shipping containers, making it harder to climb under or over.
Texas Division of Emergency Management (TDEM) officials described the order in a letter to Breitbart Texas, saying:
“At the direction of Governor Abbott, almost a dozen containers have been initially placed, along with over a mile of fencing, in locations in the El Paso sector as determined by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas National Guard, and they will remain as long as necessary to impede the flow of illegal immigrants into Texas communities.”
The shipping containers are being added to the triple-layer concertina wire fencing already constructed by the Texas National Guardsmen as part of Governor Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, with the construction having begun at Abbott’s order after El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser declared a disaster and requested state and federal assistance to deal with the illegal immigration crisis.
As background, earlier in the week, it came out that Governor Abbott had ordered the construction of two miles of fencing in the El Paso area, with our article on the subject reporting that:
The Texas government, led by Governor Greg Abbott, has installed 2 miles of new border feces in the El Paso area in an attempt to slow the surge of new migrants that are crossing at the US Southern Border.
According to Border Report, this new effort to reinforce the border’s security is already paying dividends for the residents of El Paso. Julian Resendiz wrote the following on their site.
“The guard began setting up the barrier last week at a gap in the border wall west of the Paso del Norte port of entry. In the space of eight days, the barbed wire has nearly reached a second port of entry and chain-link fence anchored by sandbags extends even farther. The result is that asylum seekers can no longer walk across ankle-deep water in the Rio Grande and turn themselves in to waiting Border Patrol agents in that area.”
In an interview, 1st Sgt. Suzanne Ringle, a border patrol agent herself, says that the difference has been night-and-day after the installation of the new fencing.
“The difference is vast. The 19th, the 20th and the 21st we had large groups of families and individuals who were wanting to come across. Now, it’s almost a ghost town out there.”
Border Patrol agents have clamored for help from the Federal government, and it appears that Texas’s state leadership has grown tired of waiting.
According to Ringle, the presence of Humvees and a constant patrol of soldiers at the border has also helped slow the wave of migrants, as the Texas National Guard has stepped in to aid Border Patrol.
In honor of someone finally stepping up to construct the border wall, here’s Trump making his “ten feet taller” comment about the wall:
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