President Trump acknowledged that any wall can be breached after a report showed that the Department of Homeland Security was able to saw through a prototype of a steel-slat barrier that the president has been pushing for the southern border.
“Well, that’s a wall that was designed by previous administrations. There’s nothing that can’t be penetrated, but you fix it. But it’s a very difficult thing to do,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Thursday before heading to Texas to visit the border. “But that’s a wall, and they have other walls. We have many walls under consideration.”
NBC reported on Thursday that Homeland Security tested eight wall prototypes — including concrete and steel-slat designs — to determine if they could be destroyed or breached with common tools.
The testing in 2017 at the Mexico-California border showed that all eight models were vulnerable, according to a February 2018 report by Homeland Security, NBC said.
The network obtained a photo of a steel wall that had been sawed through to reveal two missing sections of the slats — easily large enough to allow a person to crawl through.
Trump, who has said he’s decided on steel slats instead of concrete for a wall because it would be “less obtrusive and stronger,” said even concrete isn’t impervious.
“Even concrete — there’s acid that can go through concrete. But what you do is you fix it. And it very much limits. It’s very, very hard. The wall that we’re doing is very, very hard to penetrate,” he said outside the White House.
While previous presidents have used steel walls at the border, the prototypes tested were built during the Trump administration.
In a statement, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security said the walls serve a purpose even if they are vulnerable.
“The professionals on the border know that a wall system is intended not only to prevent entry, it is intended to defer and to increase the amount of time and effort it takes for one to enter so that we can respond with limited Border Patrol agents,” said spokeswoman Kate Waldman. “Even a wall that is being breached is a valuable tool in that it allows us to respond to the attempted illegal entry.”
