Top defense officials toured sections of the U.S.-Mexico border Saturday to analyze if reinforcement efforts are needed to block drug smuggling and other illegal activity, as the Pentagon weighs diverting billions of dollars for President Trump’s border wall.
Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, accompanied by the Joint Chiefs chairman, Gen. Joseph Dunford, was visiting a border site near El Paso, Texas, called Monument Site 3.
Shanahan and Dunford got an up-close look at U.S. Border Patrol vehicles used for surveillance. The Department of Homeland Security has requested Pentagon help in operating about 150 of the vehicle-mounted surveillance cameras, which can see as far as eight miles away.
Shanahan also tried his hand at firing a couple of Border Patrol weapons, including one that uses plastic bullets.
Later, the officials planned to fly over two border control sites farther west. These sites are on a list of high-priority projects DHS submitted to Shanahan on Friday to support its request for money to pay for construction of roads, replacement of vehicle barriers and dilapidated pedestrian fencing, and installation of lighting. The pedestrian fencing would include detection systems that could alert border patrol agents when someone is attempting to damage or break through the fencing. The money would come from the Pentagon’s drug interdiction programs. – READ MORE