DHS Sec Nielsen Tours Southern Border: Building Trump’s Wall is ‘Priority Area’

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen toured the U.S.-Mexico border this week, telling Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends” co-host Brian Kilmeade that building the border wall which President Donald Trump has planned was the “priority area” for her agency.

During Nielsen’s interview, the new DHS secretary broke with previous statements where she had downplayed the importance of a border wall along the southern border, saying the construction project was the first thing Trump told her to do when she was sworn into the job.

Partial transcript as follows:

NIELSEN: We got to have a wall, we’re going to have a wall. But then you need the technology, you need the people, you need the censors, you need the cameras, you need the monitoring, to make sure that that wall is as effective as it can be.

KILMEADE: Will this Rio Grande area look the same in a year or are we going to see some major improvements and fortifications?

NIELSEN: We will see some improvements. We’ll see some new wall, hopefully. We got to keep pressing Congress to get us some funding we requested in 2018, but if we do, this is the priority area.

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