The premise of the insane border wall/fence/magic forcefield fight and ensuing shutdown is that the government is capable of building a barrier that would be both impenetrable and effective—a “great, great wall,” as Trump put it in his 2015 campaign announcement speech. Since the early weeks of his presidency, the Department of Homeland Security has solicited and considered various prototypes for the wall. How do we build wall? Can we build good wall?
Well, maybe not. San Diego’s KPBS revealed a DHS report last year that found every prototype “was deemed vulnerable to at least one breaching technique.” Today, exclusive photos obtained by NBC reveal perhaps the funniest of those breaching techniques: a damn saw.
According to NBC, members of the military and Border Patrol were “instructed to attempt to destroy the barriers with common tools,” which sounds like a very fun day. And, most wonderfully of all, they were able to saw right through a steel slat prototype—Trump’s favored approach, which he has described as “effective while at the same time beautiful!”
I need to make this clear: They took a saw and sawed through the steel slats. Like a goddamn Bugs Bunny cartoon.
NBC’s photo of the border fence with a cartoon hole in it appears to show this fence or one similar to it, depicted here in its unblemished and intact form:
In response to KPBS obtaining its report last year, U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman Ralph DeSio told the station the prototypes “were not and cannot be designed to be indestructible.” Instead, he said, the prototypes were meant to “impede or deny efforts to scale, breach, or dig under such a barrier, giving agents time to respond.”
The wall is merely meant to delay the inevitable assault by desperate immigrants, you see. It’s fine if they can saw through it, as long as they can’t saw through it too quickly. Truly, the best way to spend $5 billion.