The White House says it’s going to build a wall along the US-Mexico border with new funding appropriated by Congress.
But the improvements they plan to make to existing fencing are nothing past administrations haven’t done.
Former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama are the ones responsible for improving border security in places like Sunland Park, New Mexico. In fact, the project to improve the fence in Sunland Park began in summer 2016, prior to President Donald Trump taking office.
“This particular wall came from the Bush administration,” Daphne Griffin, who works for a restaurant in Sunland Park, told CNN, adding that it is common knowledge. “It’s not unusual to see the wall being fixed.”
In October 2006, Bush signed the Secure Fence Act of 2006. He and Obama would go on to approve new and improved construction to border walls and fences spanning from Texas to California throughout their presidencies.
However, at a White House briefing Tuesday, budget director Mick Mulvaney pointed to photographs of a chain-link fence and referred to it as the old US border wall.
“This doesn’t stop drugs and doesn’t stop criminals from crossing the border,” Mulvaney said. “In fact, it doesn’t stop hardly anything from crossing the border.”
When asked about where the site in the photo was, Mulvaney said he “didn’t know where it (was) being built.”
CNN has learned the site is in Sunland Park, which borders the small town of Juarez, Mexico. Mulvaney claimed the wall was going up because “the President wants to make this country safe.”
Mulvaney and White House press secretary Sean Spicer both pointed out the chain-link fence that they claimed was a part of the border barrier on the US-Mexico border. However, workers and law enforcement tell CNN the fence is actually just a part of the construction site that was put up for safety purposes.
Before the temporary fence was there, a fairly tall steel fence stood in its place, but was taken down for improvements, hence the project to improve the wall.
