A border wall upgrade construction project, which was canceled by President Joe Biden, is now back underway in the Texas Rio Grande Valley. U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks announced that the Trump administration has ordered the restart of the Biden-era canceled border wall upgrade along the Texas-Mexico border. Banks announced that the project will replace six-foot guardrails with 18-foot bollard panels. They are designed to “provide impedance and denial capabilities” to illegal aliens crossing the border from Mexico into Texas.
“These panels were originally planned for installation during the prior Trump Administration, but the contracts were cancelled (sic) by the Biden Administration,” Banks stated, Breitbart News reported. “The panels going in today will replace the six-foot guard rails and will provide impedance and denial capabilities in support of the President’s recent Executive Orders to ensure complete operational control of the Southern border.”
The announcement coincides with a visit to the Texas border in Eagle Pass by Vice President JD Vance and other top Trump officials. Breitbart’s Randy Clark reported that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard accompanied the vice president during the border tour.
“The president has said we need sustained commitment from the government of Mexico to take the job of border security seriously,” the vice president told reporters. “Fentanyl is the single largest cause of death among young Americans, and we know that a substantial portion of … the precursors are made in China. They come to Mexico. They’re manufactured in Mexico and brought across the border by the Mexican drug cartels.”
Texas Governor Greg Abbott met the Trump delegation in Eagle Pass to provide a briefing on the State’s efforts to help secure the border. “All our country needed to secure the border was a new President,” Abbott said in a post on X. “Together, we will make America safe again.” Actions taken by President Donald Trump and his national security team resulted in a 94 percent drop in migrant encounters in February compared to the previous year, Breitbart Texas reported.
The over 8,300 migrants arrested by Border Patrol agents for illegally crossing the Mexican border into the U.S. marked a sharp decline from the 140,641 encounters just one year prior. Even more striking, the numbers dropped by 82 percent from December, the last full month of President Joe Biden’s tenure. As the transition of power occurred in January, the encounter numbers plummeted, dropping to just over 29,000.