US defence chiefs get first-hand look at US-Mexico border as Pentagon mulls diverting billions for Donald Trump’s wall

Top defence officials toured sections of the US-Mexico border Saturday to see how the military could reinforce efforts to block drug smuggling and other illegal activity, as the Pentagon weighs diverting billions of dollars for President Donald Trump’s border wall.

Acting Defence Secretary Patrick Shanahan, accompanied by the Joint Chiefs chairman, General Joseph Dunford, was visiting a border site called Monument Site 3 near El Paso, Texas, where National Guard troops are working with Customs and Border Protection.

Shanahan and Dunford were getting a look at vehicles used for border surveillance. The Department of Homeland Security has requested Pentagon help in operating cameras mounted on the vehicles.

Later, the officials planned to fly over two border control sites farther west. These sites are on a list of high-priority projects DHS submitted to Shanahan on Friday to support its request for money to pay for construction of roads, replacement of vehicle barriers and dilapidated pedestrian fencing, and installation of lighting. The pedestrian fencing would include detection systems that could alert border patrol agents when someone is attempting to damage or break through the fencing. The money would come from the Pentagon’s drug interdiction programmes.

One such project proposed by DHS, dubbed “El Paso Project 1,” includes segments of border west of El Paso, in Luna and Dona Ana counties, New Mexico. This is among areas DHS cites as known drug smuggling corridors used by Mexican cartels. Shanahan and Dunford were to fly over this site in a V-22 Osprey aircraft to get an aerial view of the site and to see where DHS resources are inadequate.