President Trump’s Defense Department has secured an additional $3.8 billion to construct 177 miles of border wall along the United States-Mexico border.

On Thursday, Pentagon officials announced about $2.2 billion in Defense Department funding would be redirected from counter-narcotics efforts to the construction of border wall. Another $1.6 billion originally allocated for National Guard equipment will be used to build the wall.

“Last month we received a new request from the Department of Homeland Security asking for assistance in blocking drug-smuggling corridors on Federal land along the southern border of the United States,” a Defense Department official said in a statement. He added:

In response, the Secretary of Defense authorized support of $3.8 billion to build approximately 177 miles of fencing that will help to protect our borders. We will continue to support DHS and other agencies as needed to keep our homeland is secure.

The additional funding is on top of the more than $11 billion that has already been allocated to build about 500 miles of border wall, bringing the total level of border wall funding to about $14.8 billion.

This month, Trump administration officials said they now have secured enough funding to build 1,000 miles of border wall with about 500 of those miles being completed by 2021.

Illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border has been on the decline for eight consecutive months after reaching historic levels last year. In January, Border Patrol agents caught less than 30,000 border crossers and illegal aliens attempting to make their way into the U.S. Federal immigration officials have said they only apprehend about half of all illegal aliens, indicating that another 29,000 illegal aliens may have crossed illegally last month, undetected by Border Patrol.

The decline in illegal immigration can be directly credited to Trump’s “Remain in Mexico” policy and his agreements with Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador where border crossers seeking asylum from those countries are returned immediately to await their asylum cases rather than being freed into the U.S. interior as has been done for decades.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.