The newest addition to the border wall in Southern California’s wilderness areas is expected to help resolve the ongoing “environmental crisis” caused by illegal crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border, according to William Perry Pendley, the acting director of Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
“The BLM has a statutory mandate to manage and protect public lands, and right now we can’t do our job. Illegal crossings are destroying our wilderness areas with unlawful fires, trash, foot traffic, and trails,” said Pendley on Oct. 18 during a tour of the borderland area near Otay Mesa—a San Diego County town where a 500-mile-long border barrier is currently being built.
“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership on the border wall, the federal government will not only address the humanitarian and national security crisis facing our nation, but allow the BLM to address the environmental crisis impacting our nation’s most vulnerable lands,” Pendley said, according to a BLM press release.
The new secondary wall is expected to be 30-feet-tall, 12-feet higher than the existing primary wall, according to President Donald Trump, who visited Otay Mesa last month to inspect different prototypes for the border wall. Not too long ago, Trump vetoed a Democrat-led Congress resolution that sought to invalidate his plan of allocating Pentagon money to pay for the U.S.-Mexico border wall. His veto was approved by the Republican-led Senate this week by a 54-41 vote.
Pendley’s remarks came about a month after his boss, the U.S. Department of the Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, managed to secure a temporary transfer of 560 acres of federal lands to the U.S. Department of the Army to add 70 extra miles of border wall.
“I’ve personally visited the sites that we are transferring to the Army, and there is no question that we have a crisis at our southern border,” said Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt, according to the BLM press release. “Absent this action, national security and natural resource values will be lost.
“The impacts of this crisis are vast and must be aggressively addressed with extraordinary measures. The damages to natural resource values are a byproduct of the serious national security, drug enforcement, and other immigration challenges facing our dedicated staff along the border. Construction of border barriers will help us maintain the character of the lands and resources under our care and fulfill our mission to protect them.”
A Pentagon spokesperson said last month that about one mile of border wall along the border with Mexico is constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers each day.
