U.S. Customs and Border Protection Acting Commissioner Mark Morgan celebrated the completion of 450 miles of “new border wall systems” at the end of 2020. The commissioner said Congress has approved funding for an additional 350 miles of barrier systems.
“Promises made, promises kept,” Commissioner Morgan said during a Tuesday press conference in reference to his longstanding pledge to complete 450 miles of new border wall systems by the end of the year. “I couldn’t be more proud and privileged to announce that on December 31 we were briefed that we had completed 450 miles of new border wall system.”
The commissioner said he smiled and recounted the number of times critics and the mainstream media said they would not be able to get to that goal.
“We did it,” he said. “We got it done.”
Morgan called the completion of 450 miles of new border wall systems a “historic” achievement by the Trump administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the entire CBP team.
Morgan said CBP is not done yet. Congress recently funded $1.375 billion for the construction of 350 additional miles of border wall systems. That will take the new infrastructure out to a total of 800 miles.
Breitbart News asked Morgan for specifics on where the completed new wall systems are constructed.
Commissioner Morgan replied:
- San Diego Sector — 46 miles
- El Centro Sector — 31 miles
- Yuma Sector — 107 miles
- Tucson Sector — 114 miles
- El Paso Sector — 131 miles
- Rio Grande Valley Sector — 17 miles.
Morgan said these numbers account for all but about four or five of the 450 completed miles.
The commissioner said current funding and the additional $1.375 billion authorization will take the barriers out to 800 miles.
“We believe that by January 17, 18, or 19, we will have well over 700 miles of that 800 funded, the contract will already have been awarded,” Morgan stated.
The commissioner would not differentiate the completion of walls that were upgraded or replaced versus barriers constructed where no previous barrier existed.
Morgan said this was made possible because President Trump listened to the Border Patrol agents and other experts and truly learned what they needed. The administration committed to completing the 450 miles by the end of 2020, he said.
“Our goal was 450 miles,” Morgan said in response to a question from Fox News. “This president has gone way past that.”
The CBP commissioner warned of the massive cost of canceling construction contracts under a future administration.
“They (Biden administration) would have the ability to terminate the contract,” Morgan explained. “When they do that, it’s going to cots the taxpayers billions of dollars in settlement fees.”
He explained some of those costs could include having to remove partially constructed walls and refill the ditches that have been dug.
CBP would actually have to “pay them extra to remove the rebar and fill in the trench,” he continued. “In addition to that, we’ve got about 275,000 tons of steel bollards that have been produced or are being produced that we’re going to have to walk away from.”
This would force CBP to pay extra money to either destroy the bollards or store them.
He said it would also “cost thousands of jobs of workers that would be displaced.”
In response to a question from the Washington Examiner, Morgan said that CBP completed only 100 miles of border wall systems during the first three years of this administration. Since January 2020, that number grew to the now 450 miles of new systems.
Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior news contributor for the Breitbart Texas-Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Price is a regular panelist on Fox 26 Houston’s Sunday-morning talk show, What’s Your Point? Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX, Parler @BobPrice, and Facebook.
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