People have been easily able to foil former President Donald Trump’s border wall with $5 ladders, Texas Monthly reports.
Border Patrol officials along the Southern border have regularly found discarded ladders along certain parts of the wall in Texas.
Activist Scott Nicol has routinely found many ladders as well.
"These ladders are probably $5 worth of hardware, and they're defeating a wall that cost $12 million a mile in that location,” he told the outlet. "Unlike the wall, these ladders are functional."
While Trump has touted the wall as a central campaign promise fulfilled, there have been numerous anecdotal reports of migrants using ladders to scale the barrier.
A 2019 viral video showed a person who scaled the wall using a ladder sliding down the other side.
Make-shift ladders vs. $15 billion wall:
The ladders largely appear to be made from discarded scrap lumber and have been found along the wall in Hidalgo and Granjeno, where the wall cost about $27 million per mile to build.
Border Patrol agents have sought to destroy the ladders, tossing them into piles until the heap gets so big that the city has to haul them off to a landfill.
Trump’s promise falls short:
Trump vowed to complete 1,000 miles of wall along the border but instead was only able to reinforce or replace about 400 miles of existing barriers and built 80 additional miles of wall.
Trump also pledged to make Mexico pay for the wall, but instead used $15 billion in taxpayer money.
President Joe Biden has vowed to halt all construction but the Department of Homeland Security has said it may fill “gaps” in the existing barrier.
