- A portion of President Donald Trump’s border wall blew over onto the Mexican side because of winds, according to the NBC News affiliate KYMA.
- Video of the incident showed the border-wall section swaying in the wind as crews tried to stabilize it.
- The section of the wall was under construction as one of Trump’s signature campaign promises. It replaced existing wall rather than extending the coverage.
- A Customs and Border Protection agent told CNN that the wall was newly installed and had been set in concrete that had not yet hardened.
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A portion of President Donald Trump’s border wall blew over in the wind and fell into Mexico, according to the NBC News affiliate KYMA.
The border wall collapsed about midday Wednesday and landed on a row of trees, according to the police in Mexicali, a town on the Mexico-California border.
The fallen length of wall was about 130 feet long.
Agent Carlos Pitones of the Customs and Border Protection sector in El Centro, California, told CNN that the wall was newly installed and had been set in concrete that had not yet hardened.
According to CNN, the National Weather Service recorded wind gusts up to 37 mph when the wall fell down.
Video showed the border-wall section swaying in the wind as crews tried to stabilize it.
37mph winds blew over the border wall
37mph😑
Btw remember the 700,000 hungry Americans Trump kicked off SNAP to “save money”? The $18B he’s wasted on this wall could have funded their SNAP for for 16+ years.pic.twitter.com/mZM2mB0XoJ
— Qasim Rashid for Congress (@QasimRashid) January 30, 2020
It was being put up as part of Trump's signature policy to reinforce and extend the physical barrier separating Mexico from the US.
His original ambition to swiftly erect a new barrier along the entire 1,954-mile border has been repeatedly scaled back.
This section of wall was being built to replace an existing border barrier.
According to KYMA, nobody appeared to have been hurt by the collapse.
In January, The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration was preparing to divert $7.2 billion from the Pentagon's budget to pay for wall-building.
Trump replaced a decaying portion of the border partition with a 14-mile stretch of 18- to 30-foot slatted fence in September.
When Trump visited the $147 million border-wall replacement project in Otay Mesa, California, he called the design "amazing" and signed his name in Sharpie pen.
But Trump's border plans have faced questions over both their cost and their effectiveness.
A video that went viral in December showed people easily sliding down the border-wall slats like a fireman's pole before running away as a Border Patrol vehicle pulled up.
Other videos have emerged showing people as young as 8 years old scaling an 18-foot replica of the wall. One man was able to climb while juggling.