US on track to build 400-450 miles of border wall by end of year

by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent

(Worthy News) – The US is well on track to build 400-450 miles of wall along its south-western border by the end of the calendar year, said Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf at a news conference with President Trump Wednesday.

Wolf said progress on building the wall included not only the infrastructure itself but also cameras, roads, lighting, and fiber optic cables. Explaining the benefits of the wall, Wolf stated it helped border patrol officers in enabling them to “focus elsewhere on parts of the border that are very difficult to patrol so we can use our resources in a different way.”

Addressing the conference prior to Wolf, President Trump stated the wall was now up to 161 miles; he said there were “fill-ins” but that the wall was mostly contiguous.

The president said the wall is needed to counteract a growing threat that malign actors would seek to exploit the coronavirus outbreak for their own criminal gain. He announced the US was launching advanced counter-narcotics operations in the Western Hemisphere to protect Americans from the “deadly scourge of illegal narcotics.” He stated: “We must not let the drug cartels exploit the pandemic to threaten American lives.”

Attesting that the wall will have “a tremendous impact on drugs,” the president added he thought it might also impact the coronavirus outbreak.

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