Free Republic

321 miles completed, 260 miles under construction, 157 miles under pre-construction (738 Total).

"I have no hesitancy at all to say by the end of this calendar year, we're going to meet and probably exceed our goal that we promised for a very long time of 450 miles of border wall... Today, of all days on 9/11, we should be applauding this effort because our ability to know what and who is coming across our border because of the tools this President has given us, like the wall, has exponentially improved our ability to protect the the homeland.

The company building the virtual border wall has a new version of its stealthy fast-flying drones — and a fresh contract with Customs and Border Protection to match. Anduril, a young defense-friendly tech company from the founder of Oculus, received $36 million from Customs and Border Protection this month for its AI-powered autonomous surveillance towers... In July, CBP awarded Anduril $25 million for a previous set of surveillance towers. The agency plans to implement 200 towers by 2022 in an ongoing relationship with the contractor worth more than $200 million... Now, Anduril is launching the fourth iteration of its small,...

The U.S. government has expelled more than 147,000 migrants through the Southwest border since March under a health mandate to stem the spread of COVID-19. Many are being sent to Mexico in two hours or less under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Title 42 order, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan... The fast-track expulsions have increased almost exponentially, going from 7,079 in March to 42,071 in August alone... Mexican officials say they’re receiving the largest groups of Title 42 migrants — 4,600 in the past six months — at the Columbus-Palomas (NM) port...

317 miles completed, 264 miles under construction, 157 miles under pre-construction.

In fiscal year 2019, the Office of Field Operations seized some 68,585 points of meth nationwide, compared to 118,153 pounds so far this year...since the borders have remained closed to only essential travel because of the coronavirus pandemic, officers said it’s forcing criminals to use other routes and methods of concealment.

The federal government filed a flurry of land condemnation lawsuits during the past week — one of many signs that work on the border wall may be accelerating in the Rio Grande Valley. From January to July, the federal government filed 23 land condemnation lawsuits in the McAllen Division of the Southern District of Texas, which covers Hidalgo County and Starr County. In the last week of August, the government filed nine more. "This is so inherently political for the White House, for the Department of Justice, and we know the president has made this a high priority," said attorney...

307 miles completed, 274 miles under construction, 157 miles under pre-construction. (738 Total)

While contractors build a 30-foot-tall steel border wall southeast of Tucson, wildlife advocates are racing to document where animals cross the border most often and hoping federal officials will consider taking down sections of wall that block those corridors... To identify the corridors most used by wildlife, the Wildlands Network in January set up scores of motion-activated wildlife cameras in the San Bernardino Valley in southeastern Cochise County, where contractors already built some 15 miles of new wall. Meanwhile, the Sky Island Alliance is running a similar camera project east of Nogales in the San Rafael Valley and the nearby...

U.S. Customs and Border Protection has announced a plan to extend the border wall and have it cut across the Tijuana River where the river enters the U.S. in San Ysidro, Calif. (San Diego) It’s approximately 0.2 miles across the Tijuana River. The new wall would connect existing walls that end at the east and west banks of the river. The proposed wall would include a bridge, a vertical lift gate to allow the water to flow below, lighting, a 20-foot wide roadway and a maintenance walkway. The wall would be supported by a series of 30-foot-tall bollards or steel...

Elbit Systems of America has successfully integrated acoustic, vibration, and visual sensors with artificial intelligence/machine learning algorithms into its TORCH® command & control/common operating picture software. This solution is now being deployed as part of CBP’s Border Wall System to provide an autonomous capability for U.S. Border Patrol to know when items of interest are trying to unlawfully cross into the United States. Elbit Systems of America has also integrated TORCH® with Sintela’s ONYX™ Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) system that senses acoustic and vibration activities, along with wide angle commercial cameras and machine learning algorithms... TORCH® and ONYX are part...

The leaders of the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection are scheduled to travel to South Texas on Thursday morning and stop at a section of border wall to mark the 300th mile... Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Acting CBP Commissioner Mark Morgan are both planning to christen a section of the newly completed segment of border wall in Hidalgo, Texas... On Wednesday, President Donald Trump nominated Wolf to be the permanent head of the agency, the largest law enforcement agency in the nation. His nomination is pending confirmation by the Senate. Morgan and Border...

Former White House adviser Steve Bannon was arrested for alleged fraud in connection with a border wall-building campaign. The estimable Andrew McCarthy reviews the indictment in National Review and comments, “The wire-fraud and money-laundering charges were a long time coming, and the postal inspectors appear to have meticulously traced the proceeds through numerous bank accounts, real-estate parcels, and at least one vehicle. These are itemized in the indictment’s forfeiture allegations, which are in addition to the significant imprisonment and staggering fines that could result in the event of convictions.” Here’s my commentary from Asia Times: In August 2017, I was...

WASHINGTON — Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage promised donors to his online crowdfunding campaign that their money would only go to construction of a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. However, he cashed in on that trust by secretly taking more than $300,000 in donations to buy himself a luxury car, jewelry and pay down his debts, according to a Justice Department indictment unsealed Thursday. Kolfage 38, of Miramar Beach, Fla., is a well-known Purple Heart recipient who survived a rocket attack in 2004 at Balad Air Base in Iraq that caused the amputation of his legs and right arm, according...

A defiant Steve Bannon claimed Thursday that his bombshell indictment on fraud and money-laundering charges was a “fiasco” caused by people who want to block the construction of the border. As he walked out of Manhattan federal court in Lower Manhattan Thursday, Bannon ripped off his surgical mask before claiming to members of the press that “this entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall.”

Former Trump campaign manager Steve Bannon was arrested Thursday for his alleged role in skimming donations from “We Build the Wall”, an online fundraising campaign aimed at gathering funds to construct the president’s controversial border wall, officials said. Using a non-profit organization that he controlled, Bannon “received over $1m from We Build the Wall, at least some of which Bannon used to cover hundreds of thousands of dollars in [his] personal expenses”, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said. Three other men, Brian Kolfage, Andrew Badolato and Timothy Shea, were also arrested in this alleged scheme to defraud the non-profit, which authorities...

Headline only at this point

This is the website that Trump set up to show the progress on the wall. 275 miles, so far. https://www.cbp.gov/border-security/along-us-borders/border-wall-system

About a year ago Sylvia Ramirez and her family thought they had saved an historic church and cemetery tied to her ancestors from border wall construction that would essentially “wall” them off from the rest of the country... She learned through her attorney Monday, as part of ongoing litigation with the government over construction near the land in San Juan, that the government would begin building a border wall on the current levee that leads into the property by the end of the month... On Friday, Aug. 14, Ramirez observed for herself what appeared to be clearing of land on...

The federal government is moving to put up concertina wire through several stretches of Laredo’s riverfront: near the World Trade Bridge, Father McNaboe Park, through the downtown area to Zacate Creek, and through Santa Rita Park. In speaking with Customs and Border Protection officials, City Manager Robert Eads reported to City Council that this razor wire is not preliminary border wall construction, but is pruportedly necessary for operational reasons... Councilman Merc Martinez believes the government is putting this wire up where they’ll first start construction for the wall... Melissa Cigarroa, president of the Rio Grande International Study Center and member...