Smugglers sliced into border wall
Smugglers sawed into new sections of President Trump’s border wall 18 times in the San Diego area during a single one-month span late last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection records show.
The breaches and attempted breaches were made between Sept. 27 and Oct. 27, the CBP records state, with five of the incidents occurring on a single day, Oct. 10.
The agency withheld information about the specific locations of the incidents, citing law enforcement sensitivities. CBP said the average cost to repair the damage was $620 per incident.
The records don’t indicate whether the one-month span last year is a representative sample of how frequently people are trying to breach new sections of Trump’s border barrier, which are made of tall steel bollards partly filled with concrete and rebar.
The Post reported last November that smuggling crews armed with common battery-operated power tools — including reciprocating saws that retail for as little as $100 at home improvement stores — can cut hack through the bollards using inexpensive blades designed for slicing through metal and stone.
The Post requested breaching data for the full 2019 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30, but CBP provided data for the time period spanning Jan. 1 to Oct. 27.
The agency’s figures show all 18 breaches and attempted breaches occurred between Sept. 27 and Oct. 27, with none recorded during the nine months prior.
But CBP officials and border agents have privately acknowledged repeated breaches and breaching attempts during that time span in the San Diego area, incidents that do not appear to have been tallied in the response to the Post’s FOIA request.
CBP said the 18 incidents were a count of smuggling attempts that required the U.S. government to repair the structure and did not necessarily represent successful breaches that allowed narcotics or migrants to illegally enter the United States.
“Transnational criminal organizations are an adaptive adversary — regardless of materials, nothing is impenetrable if given unlimited time and tools,” according to a CBP statement. The agency said that is why the U.S. Border Patrol is building a “border wall system that includes technology, roads and an enforcement zone. Taken together, these capabilities maximize how long agents have to respond to attempted crossings — increasing the time they have from mere seconds to minutes, hours or even days depending on the adversary’s methods.”
The San Diego area has the most fortified barriers anywhere along the border with Mexico.
Recently completed sections feature twin layers of steel bollard fencing as tall as 30 feet, with a paved road running between them that allows U.S. agents to quickly respond to scaling and breaching incidents.
The CBP statement further diminished the significance of the breaching attempts, saying the “border wall system’s” technology — sensors, cameras and other hardware — isn’t yet fully operational in the San Diego area.
Border agents said sawing crews have learned to sever the bollards to create 14-inch openings, just enough for people and drugs to pass through.
Because the bollards are so tall and heavy but are attached to one another only at the top, they are relatively easy to push out of the way once they’re cut near their concrete anchors, lacking horizontal reinforcement, structural engineers say.
Agents said the smugglers have learned to disguise the breaches with putty, potentially allowing them to return to the same breach and use it again and again until agents discover it.
Some of the crews were so proficient in the technique that agents have learned to scan the surface of the bollards for cosmetic defects, dismounting from their vehicles to kick at the base of any bollards that appear they might have been sawed through.