July 17, 2020 / Modified jul 17, 2020 12:39 p.m.

Border wall project based on outdated model, report finds

A federal report says CBP ignored its own priorities for where to build and relied on limited information about border crossings.

Border Wall Construction Construction underway on a section of border wall in Organ Pipe National Monument, Sept. 18, 2019.
AZPM

A new federal investigation finds that the Trump administration moved forward with the border wall along the boundary with Mexico with no real strategy to control the border in place.

The Office of Inspector General says the U.S. government’s border wall project relies on outdated models for how to achieve operational control of the border and no plan for how to implement much else.

The report issued this week says Customs and Border Protection ignored its own priorities for where to build a new border wall and relied on only one year of information about border crossings before it started building.

That means CBP doesn’t have a plan in place for spending billions of taxpayer dollars on a new wall system. Hiring more agents to secure the border, for example, would have been cheaper.

CBP for its part told investigators it was responding to president Donald Trump’s 2017 executive order to immediately build the wall.

Fronteras Desk
Fronteras Desk is a KJZZ project covering important stories in an expanse stretching from Northern Arizona deep into northwestern Mexico.
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