Calexico will have more border construction next year, according to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, following the completion this month of a replacement border barrier project that ended at the new port of entry downtown.

Nielsen visited the recently erected structure Friday to watch workers weld a plaque honoring President Donald Trump to the barrier that the administration has hailed as the first part of his promised wall.

The structure, Nielsen said, was a necessary piece of the administration’s push for more border security, and she reiterated the administration’s call for Congress to alter the asylum system and change the way that families and children, in particular, interact with the immigration system when they arrive at the southwest border.

“Border security is national security, and it is vital to protecting the homeland,” Nielsen said.


Whether the barrier is a wall or a fence and how much credit the Trump administration can take for it has been the subject of much debate since construction began in February.

The replacement project was initially planned in 2009 and funded during Trump’s first year in office, according to CBP. It was slated to cost about $18 million.

“Let me be clear — walls work,” Nielsen said.

After Operation Gatekeeper in San Diego shifted migrants east to Calexico, the original barrier — made of Vietnam-war landing mats — was installed in the 1990s.


Apprehensions of illegal border crossings, how the federal government generally measures migration trends, decreased in the following years in the area, she said.

Advocates for migrant rights have criticized the existing border barriers, noting that their construction has shifted migration patterns into more dangerous areas like the desert and mountains.

Standing a few feet from the 30-foot bollards — or posts set close together — that line a roughly two-mile stretch between Calexico and Mexicali, Nielsen praised the new infrastructure as a deterrent to crossings.

At least one person was hospitalized after falling from the barrier in recent weeks, according to Border Patrol.


“Looking at this, I would not want to climb it,” Nielsen said.

El Centro Border Patrol Sector Chief Gloria Chavez told Nielsen that the area, known to agents for its high level of activity, has already seen a change since construction.

Chavez added that the sector has seen Mexican migrants claiming to be from countries further south to avoid being immediately deported. Agents have also identified migrants making fraudulent claims about familial relationships in order to avoid long detention times, she said.

Migrants arriving with children are generally not held in custody for as long as adults by themselves because of rules about how long children can stay in detention centers. The Trump administration has pushed to change these rules to be able to hold children for longer while migrant advocates argue that would be inhumane and could have lasting psychological effects.


In August, the most recent data available, agents separated 60 claimed families that they believed to be fraudulent, a total of 119 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security. One of those families was in the El Centro Sector, and five were in the San Diego Sector.

Nielsen made the stop as part of a two-day border tour as the administration determines its response to a group of thousands of migrants, mostly from Honduras, making its way to the U.S. border from southern Mexico. Reports have circulated that President Trump may sign an order blocking certain migrants from seeking asylum.

“We are looking at every possible way within the legal construct we have that those who don’t have a legal right to come into this country do not come in,” Nielsen said.

She said the administration is working with the Mexican government and pushing for those in the caravan who are seeking asylum to apply in Mexico rather than continue north.


Her last visit to the Calexico border construction project in April also coincided with a migrant caravan making its way north. In response to that caravan, led by Pueblo Sin Fronteras, the Trump administration announced its zero tolerance policy that resulted in mass family separations along the southwest border as parents were prosecuted for illegal border crossings.

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