A border wall upgrade construction project canceled by President Joe Biden is back underway in the Texas Rio Grande Valley.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks announced that the Trump administration ordered the restart of a Biden-era-canceled border wall upgrade project along the Texas border with Mexico.
Banks reported that the project will replace six-foot guard rails with 18-foot bollard panels. They are designed to “provide impedance and denial capabilities” to illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico into Texas.
” These panels were originally planned for installation during the prior Trump Administration, but the contracts were cancelled (sic) by the Biden Administration,” Banks stated. “The panels going in today will replace the six-foot guard rails and will provide impedance and denial capabilities in support of the President’s recent Executive Orders to ensure complete operational control of the Southern border.”
The announcement comes on the same day the Vice President JD Vance and other top Trump officials visited the Texas border in Eagle Pass. Breitbart’s Randy Clark reported that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard joined the vice president on the border tour.
“The president has said we need sustained commitment from the government of Mexico to take the job of border security seriously,” the vice president told reporters. “Fentanyl is the single largest cause of death among young Americans, and we know that a substantial portion of … the precursors are made in China. They come to Mexico. They’re manufactured in Mexico and brought across the border by the Mexican drug cartels.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott met the Trump delegation in Eagle Pass to provide a briefing on the State’s efforts to help secure the border. “All our country needed to secure the border was a new President,” Abbott said in a post on X. “Together, we will make America safe again.”
Actions taken by President Donald Trump and his national security team led to a 94 percent drop in migrant encounters in February compared to the prior year, Breitbart Texas reported. The just over 8,300 migrants arrested by Border Patrol agents who illegally crossed the Mexican border into the United States fell by 94 percent to the 140,641 encountered just one year ago. Perhaps more shocking, the numbers dropped by 82 percent from December, President Joe Biden’s last full month in office. As the transition of power took place in January, the encounter number began to plummet, falling to just over 29,000.
On February 21, Texas Department of Public Safety Spokesman Lt. Chris Olivarez reported the daily migrant apprehension rate along the southwest border fell below 200 for the first time when agents encountered 199 migrants. By February 22, that number fell to 185.
On February 19, Breitbart Texas reported that border encounters in February averaged about 328 per day. If that number held through the end of the month, migrant encounters for February could have been as low as 9,200. The actual number reported by Chief Banks exceeded that prediction with the arrest of 8,326 migrants.
This represents a record low in CBP reports dating back to the last full year of the Clinton administration (FY2000). The previous low occurred during President Trump’s third full month of his first in office (April 2017) when agents encountered 11,127 migrants.
Bob Price is the Breitbart Texas-Border team’s associate editor and senior news contributor. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s What’s Your Point? Sunday morning talk show. He also serves as president of Blue Wonder Gun Care Products.
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