Day After Donald Trump Claims Border Wall Being Built ‘At Record Speed,’ New Section Of Wall Collapses
At a rally in Wildwood, New Jersey, on Tuesday evening, Donald Trump declared that he is now building a “powerful border wall” to separate the United States from Mexico and that the new wall is being erected “at record speed,” as quoted by PolitiFact.
But while some new sections of the border wall are under construction — mostly replacing or reinforcing existing wall panels, according to PolitiFact — one section of new paneling collapsed on Wednesday, less than 24 hours after Trump boasted of the new wall construction.
According to a CNN report, winds up to 37 miles per hour knocked over a portion of the new border wall in Calexico, California, a town about 120 miles east of San Diego, on the border with Mexico. The wall fell onto the Mexican side of the border but was prevented from collapsing all the way to the ground by a row of trees, as seen in the video below on this page.
Customs and Border Protection Agent Carlos Pitones told CNN that the portion off border wall that toppled had recently been set into a cement foundation, but the cement had not dried yet, making the Calexico section of wall vulnerable to the high winds that swept through Southern California on Tuesday night.
WATCH: A part of the border wall between Calexico, CA and Mexicali, Mexico tipped over into Mexico on Wednesday afternoon, according to Mexicali police. Trees next to the wall have kept it from falling over entirely. No injuries or damages have been reported so far. pic.twitter.com/PVl4s8VS00
— CBS 21 News (@CBS21NEWS) January 30, 2020
The collapse happened just before noon PST, according to police in Mexicali, a town in the Mexican state of Baja California, that abuts Calexico on the U.S.-Mexican border. The toppled section was about 130 feet in length, according to a report by KYMA TV, a station located in the border region between California and Arizona, and Mexico.
No injuries or property damage — other than to the wall itself — was reported, Pitones told CNN.
At his rally on Tuesday, Trump said that “we just reached over 100 miles of wall,” as quoted by PolitiFact. But according to the CNN report, only about one-half mile of the wall construction is actually new, with the remainder being repairs and upgrades to previously existing sections of the border wall. The small section of the new wall has been constructed in the Rio Grande Valley region of Texas.
Trump also claimed at the rally that “next year we’ll be over 400 miles.” But according to PolitiFact, what Trump is referring to remains unclear. In May of 2019, Trump made a similar claim about 400 new miles of wall going up in 2020, but PolitiFact was unable to determine what he meant by the earlier statement either.
Acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark Morgan has said that he feels “no pressure” from Trump to build miles of a new wall, according to the CNN report.
