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  • 2021-09-01 (xsd:date)
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  • Part of Trump's Border Wall Damaged By Monsoons in Arizona (en)
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  • In late August 2021, readers asked us about reports that a portion of the southern border wall built during the Trump administration was damaged by seasonal rains in Arizona. During his presidential campaign, former U.S. President Donald Trump had stated he would build a wall covering the roughly 2,000-mile U.S. border with Mexico, and that Mexico would pay for the project. Aside from the fact that parts of the border already had walls, experts had stated that in some places where it didn't, such a project would not be possible. The Mexican government unsurprisingly refused to pay for another country's construction project. The Trump administration pushed forward with construction, ignoring in some regions environmental regulations. Some saw the damage to the wall in Arizona in August 2021, therefore, as the expected fate of a boondoggle. Border Report, a news agency that focuses on the U.S.-Mexico border, reported on Aug. 17, 2021, that 2.15 inches of rain fell in Cochise County, Arizona. Those rains, though not out of character for the region, damaged a controversial special movable border wall gates that were built in river beds during the Trump administration. We reached out to the U.S. Department of Home Security, which oversees border security, asking whether the damaged portion of the wall would be rebuilt and how much it would cost. We also asked that if the wall would be repaired and what would be done to prevent this damage from being a regular occurrence. In response, we received only the following emailed statement from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: The portion of the wall that was damaged consisted of movable gates placed in a riverbed that did not hold up to several feet of rising water that coursed through the desert borderlands region, per Border Report. According to the technology news site Gizmodo, the failure of that portion of the wall was predictable, reporting: Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner for the Center for Biological Diversity, told Border Report: (en)
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