Summary List Placement

People are using $5 ladders to climb over sections of the $15 billion southern border wall built by former President Donald Trump, Texas Monthly reported.

United States Border Patrol officials who monitor the wall, which has been built along parts of the US-Mexico border, frequently find discarded ladders left by unauthorized migrants crossing into south Texas along certain parts of the wall, the report said.

The Texas Monthly report cited activist Scott Nicol, an activist, and Texas resident, who told Texas Monthly: “These ladders are probably $5 worth of hardware, and they’re defeating a wall that cost $12 million a mile in that location.”

He added: “Unlike the wall, these ladders are functional.”

President Trump’s pledge to build a wall was one of his central campaign pledges when he entered office in 2016. There have been multiple reports since then that migrants are able to climb parts of the wall and scale down the other side.

A viral video published in 2019 showed a person who had scaled the wall using a ladder then easily sliding down the other side.

The ladders, made from scrap lumber, are reportedly a common device used along the stretch of the wall between Granjeno and Hidalgo, whereas rope ladders are more commonly used further upriver.

Border Patrol agents reportedly drive their vehicles over the ladders to destroy them, tossing them into piles that become big enough that they have to be hauled off to landfill.

The stretch between Hilgado and Granjeno was partly constructed under Trump and partly during the previous Obama administration, Texas Monthly reported, with the cost of the Trump section of the wall reaching $27 million a mile.

Trump’s pledge to build a complete 1,000 mile wall along the US-Mexico border was never finished, Insider’s Tom Porter reported.

He built only 80 extra miles of wall during his presidency and much of his presidency was spent reinforcing 400 miles of fences and barriers that had been installed during previous administrations.

He had pledged that Mexico would meet the cost of funding the work but the estimated $15 billion in funding instead came from federal taxes.

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