Noem says entire southern border wall will be painted black to stop climbing
/ CBS/AP
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Tuesday that the entire wall along the U.S.-Mexico border is going to be painted black to make it hotter and deter illegal immigration — an idea she said was "specifically at the request" of President Trump.
Noem spoke during a visit to a portion of the wall in New Mexico, where she also picked up a roller brush to help out with the painting.
She touted the height of the wall as well as its depth as ways to deter people seeking to go over or under the walls. And Noem said Homeland Security was going to be trying black paint to make the metal hotter.
"That is specifically at the request of the president, who understands that in the hot temperatures down here when something is painted black it gets even warmer and it will make it even harder for people to climb. So we are going to be painting the entire southern border wall black to make sure that we encourage individuals to not come into our country illegally," Noem said.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks, who attended the event with Noem, said the paint would also help deter rust.
During Mr. Trump's first term, building the wall was a central focus of his hardline immigration policy, though construction on the wall faced some legal and logistical delays. During his second term, his mass deportation agenda with arrests in the interior of the country has been the main focus, but Homeland Security will be getting about $46 billion to complete the wall as part of new funding passed by Congress in the Trump-backed "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" this summer.
The Trump administration has sought to fortify the southern border in other ways, too. Thousands of military personnel have been sent to the U.S.-Mexico border, and Mr. Trump has authorized the military to take control of narrow strips of public land along the border. Crossing into those territories is considered entering a military base, allowing them to be detained by both Border Patrol and the Defense Department, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said earlier this year.
Noem said the federal government has been building about a half mile of barrier every day.
"The border wall will look very different based on the topography and the geography of where it is built," she said.
She said that in addition to barriers like the one she visited Tuesday, the department is also working on "water-borne infrastructure." Long sections of the roughly 2,000-mile border between the U.S. and Mexico sit along the Rio Grande River in Texas.
The Trump administration is pushing forward with completing the wall at the same time that the number of people crossing the border illegally has plummeted. In the month of June, just over 6,000 migrants were apprehended along the southern border, a decades-long low — and a steep dropoff from the Biden administration, when border arrests peaked at upwards of 6,000 per day.
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