Smugglers could illegally enter the US through floodgates left open on Trump's border wall
- Parts of President Trump's border wall would require the installation of floodgates that would be left open for months at a time, according to a report from The Washington Post.
- The gates would allow water and debris to pass through during rainy months, which leads to regional flooding in the US Southwest.
- The practice has been in place for some time, and people have reportedly already used the gates to enter the US illegally, sometimes smuggling drugs through the opening, according to WaPo.
- Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
Portions of President Donald Trump's new border wall between the US and Mexico would likely require the installation of floodgates that would be left open for months at a time in order to prevent flooding during the rainy season in the US Southwest, border officials and other people familiar with the plan told The Washington Post.
According to The Washington Post report, sources familiar with the matter said the president's wall during these intense periods of flooding would act as a sewer gate, as its 30-foot metal bollards - spaced 4 inches apart - trap debris like vegetation, rocks, and tree limbs during intense thunderstorms. Trump's wall can reportedly not handle the pressure placed on them by the trapped debris and flowing water during the periods of flooding, The Post said.
As a result, gates must be installed to allow the flow of the water and debris over the border, although portions of the wall that require such gates are in regions without electricity, meaning they have to be left open by border agents for months at a time.
Forklifts are used by border patrol agents at the beginning of the summer to raise the wall to allow water and debris to pass through, John Ladd, a cattle rancher who has had government installed border wall since 2008, told the Post.
Ladd said when the gates were first opened, smugglers were able to bring marijuana into the country by driving through the openings into the US. Since the height of the opening had been lowered, vehicles were prevented from entering, but traffickers on foot still have come through the flood gate during the summer months, he told WaPo.
"The border is so diverse," Roy Villareal, chief of the Border Patrol's Tucson sector, told The Washington Post. "You have to plan for water flow. . . . People think it's just this monolithic wall, sort of like the Great Wall of China, where you drop it into place and that's all there is to it. And that's not the reality at all."
The news comes just two days after wind gusts along the border in California caused a 130-foot portion of the wall to blow over and land on trees on the Mexican side of the wall.
Smugglers have already figured out how to cut through Trump's border wall using commercially available power tools that cost as little as $100, according to a report from The Washington Post.
A request for comment from the Department of Homeland Security was not returned, and the White House declined to provide comment for this report.
Read more:
Trump reportedly plans to divert more money from the US military to pay for the border wall