The Department of Homeland Security cut a steel slat prototype with a saw in a test, as shown in a photo obtained by NBC News.
Eight prototype steel and concrete walls have been built in Otay Mesa, California, which lies across the border from Tijuana, Mexico. President Donald Trump inspected these prototypes last March, and decided on a steel slat for his proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. However, an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection report from February 2018 shows that DHS found through testing in 2017, that all of the prototypes could be breached. The redacted version of this report, which San Diego public broadcaster KPBS obtained through a Freedom of Information Act Request, includes photos of the breaches.
“The (redacted) breaching technique was rescheduled to be last breaching technique on each mock-up, since the technique had the potential to impact the structural integrity of the entire mock-up,” reads the report, according to KPBS.
When asked for a comment, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ralph DeSio said that the wall prototypes “were not and cannot be designed to be indestructible,” and said that they are meant to “impede or deny efforts to scale, breach, or dig under such a barrier, giving agents time to respond.”
San Diego Sector Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott added that the photos obtained by NBC News show smaller versions being tested than the prototypes seen by Trump and by NBC in 2018.
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