Brandon Darby and Ildefonso Ortiz, Breitbart, July 23, 2019

Border Patrol agents insist that completed new sections of border barriers are helping them to secure the border and making the agents safer in the process. This comes on the heels of media reports inaccurately asserting that no new barriers have been constructed during the Trump Administration.

Border Patrol Agent Mike Matzke told Breitbart News, “New sections of Trump’s wall have been built and anyone claiming that a 30-foot barrier that replaced a 10-foot high sheet metal fence isn’t new barrier doesn’t know what they are talking about. The old legacy landing mat fence in our sector wasn’t effective and really bad people were jumping all day and night.”

Agent Matzke spoke with Breitbart News in his role as president of the National Border Patrol Council’s Local 2554 in El Centro, California.

“We’ve had people throw Molotov cocktails over the old landing mat fence and it was dangerous because we couldn’t see through it like we can with Trump’s new border barrier. Here in El Centro, we have the highest stretch of border wall on the entire Southwest border. Trump’s new wall section is 30-feet high,” Agent Matzke said.

Other Border Patrol agents discussing the matter said that the new Trump wall segment was 2.25 miles long and described it as being in the most needed area. Agent Matzke confirmed this and said the stretch is just to the west of the downtown area of Calexico, California. “{snip} Illegal entries in the area are down 75 percent since Trump built it.”

The New River crosses from Mexico into California in the area, so Border Patrol agents have expressed that crossing will never be at zero percent due to environmental restrictions. The river is highly polluted and agents are prone to avoid entering the water.

{snip}

“A couple-mile stretch of Trump’s wall might not seem like a lot to some people, but it sure makes all the difference in the world to us. We are safer and our objectives are much easier to meet,” said Agent Matzke. He said Trump is building another approximate 11 miles of wall, but groups are slowing the construction with court injunctions.

{snip}