When President Biden took office in January, his administration ordered an immediate halt on the construction of a 30-foot high border fence, leaving a gaping hole at one of the most vulnerable stretches of the US-Mexico border.
The 20-foot gap in the frontier wall at Border Monument Three — one of the 276 original markers erected after the Mexican-American War in 1848 — was allowing thousands of smugglers and migrants to cross into the US with relative ease, Border Patrol agents told The Post last week.
“The contractors just stopped,” said Richard Barragan, a Border Patrol agent in the El Paso Sector, pointing to the broken wall and a brace leftover by federal contractors still hanging from the iron fence when they hastily abandoned construction in January.
Along the nearly 2,000-mile southern border, thousands of tons of steel and other building materials have gathered rust since the order to halt construction, Border Patrol agents said.