By using cordless saws that cost as little as $100 each at hardware stores, they manage to enter, US border agents and officials told the Washington Post. Most of breaches have occurred in the busy area near San Diego.
Trump administration officials said they were aware of only “a few instances” in which traffickers managed to breach rebuilt sections of the $10 billion wall.
In a matter of minutes, the cheap saws can cut through the wall’s steel bollards enabling the illegals to push the tall panels forward, thus allowing people to pass through, the New York Daily News reported.
While border officials insisted the newly reinforced sections of wall were still more difficult to cut through than they were before, they nevertheless attributed new breaches to innovations by traffickers.
Customs and Border Protection spokesman Matthew Leas confirmed to CBS News that such breaches were taking place. The traffickers have created a multi-billion dollar industry of smuggling undocumented immigrants into the US.
“They’re not just going to leave San Diego because the wall gets better,” Ronald Vitiello, a former US. Border Patrol and US Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief, told the Post. “That’s life on the border.”
Trump on Saturday downplayed reports of traffickers cutting through the new tall sections of wall. The president said that the US had “a lot of people watching” and “cutting is one thing, but it’s easily fixed”.
He also defended the wall. “We have a very powerful wall,” he said. “But no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything, in all fairness.”
President Trump on report parts of border wall have been sawed through: "I hadn't heard that. We have a very powerful wall, but no matter how powerful, you can cut through anything." pic.twitter.com/eza4h0m8GU
— The Hill (@thehill) November 3, 2019
A Customs and Border Protection report obtained by San Diego public broadcasting station KPBS through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that all eight of the wall prototypes built for Trump could in fact be breached.
Bust Leas told CBS: “Any characterization that the wall is not working is ridiculous. The wall is working. Criminals are trying to defeat it and they are going to continue to try new tactics, which we will also defeat.”
The Trump administration plans to construct at least 600 km of new border wall by the end of 2020.