Wind knocks over part of new US-Mexico border wall in California, video shows

A newly installed segment of the border wall between the United States and Mexico tumbled over on Wednesday due to heavy Southern California winds, video shows.

KYMA published footage showing the panels teetering on trees in Mexicali on the Mexico side amid wind gusts, with the TV station reporting that police in Mexicali confirmed the 130-foot segment fell “a little before 12 p.m. local time.”

According to KYMA, “the wall was being worked on as part of the new border wall project launched by President Donald Trump.”

Customs and Border Patrol Agent Carlos Pitones of the El Centro Sector said the panels that fell had recently been put in concrete foundations in Calexico — and the concrete hadn’t dried fully by the time the wind picked up, CNN reported.

“We are grateful there was no property damage or injuries,” Pitones said, according to CNN.

CBP did not immediately respond to a request for comment from McClatchy News.

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CNN reported that traffic in the area was diverted and that CBP “is working with the Mexican government on the next steps to right the wall.”

Pitones said it is not known how long the construction work in the area will be suspended to clean up the fallen walls, CNN reported.

Crews can be seen working near the fallen wall section in the video published by KYMA.

In June, CBP announced in a news release that it had begun working with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on “panel installation for approximately 11 miles of new border wall system in place of dilapidated and outdated designs in Calexico, California.”

Construction on that section and a “new border wall project in Tecate, California,” were expected to go into 2020, according to CBP.

“The San Diego and El Centro Sectors are areas of high illegal entry and are experiencing large numbers of individuals and narcotics being smuggled into the country illegally,” CBP officials said in the news release. “The construction of border infrastructure within these project areas will support DHS’s ability to impede and deny illegal border crossings and the drug and human smuggling activities of transnational criminal organizations.”

Wind isn’t the only problem facing new sections of the border wall.

The Washington Post reported in November that “smuggling gangs in Mexico have repeatedly sawed through new sections of President Trump’s border wall in recent months by using commercially available power tools, opening gaps large enough for people and drug loads to pass through, according to U.S. agents and officials with knowledge of the damage.”

Trump campaigned in the 2016 election on the promise of building a wall along the country’s southern border, saying that Mexico would pay for it.

At a campaign rally Tuesday in New Jersey, Trump touted his administration’s work on the wall and “celebrated a recent court victory allowing him to push forward with plans to use $3.6 billion in military construction funds for the development of his border wall,” Newsweek reported.

“The money is won. And we are now building that beautiful wall,” Trump told supporters at the Wildwoods Convention Center Oceanfront in Wildwood, according to Politifact. “This powerful border wall is going up at record speed, and we just reached over 100 miles of wall. And next year we’ll be over 400 miles. And shortly thereafter it will be complete.”

But Politifact reports that “most of the border wall projects replace or bolster existing fencing [and] ... the wall still has a long way to go before it matches Trump’s vision from 2016.”