Work on building more border wall starts in Santa Teresa

Work crews in New Mexico are now forging ahead with construction of taller border fencing funded through a national emergency declaration by President Donald Trump.

The work on his hallmark campaign promise involves mostly replacement fencing along a 46-mile stretch of desert west of Santa Teresa.

At the New Mexico site, about 20 workers placed rebar frames for concrete footers along the path of the wall. A 50-foot crane towered over the site, standing out on the treeless brushland and cracked washes that stretch for miles in every direction.

Workers broke ground between Columbus and Santa Teresa — small towns near ports of entry along the border between New Mexico and the state of Chihuahua, Mexico.

The project is being funded with money initially allocated to the Defense Department that was redirected by Trump’s executive order.

Use of the money was previously frozen by lower courts while a lawsuit proceeded. Last month, however, the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the use of about $2.5 billion.

A border wall was a keystone of the president’s 2016 election campaign, but Congress has resisted funding all of it. This year it allocated $1.4 billion, but the president wanted much more.

The administration has awarded $2.8 billion in contracts for barriers covering 247 miles, with all but 17 miles of that to replace existing barriers instead of expanding coverage.

Various forms of barriers already exist along 654 miles — about a third — of the border.

The construction comes as immigrant apprehensions have fallen sharply over the past two months due to the summer heat and a clamp down in Mexico.

Tens of thousands of people have come to the U.S. over the past year. Most are Central American families with children who turn themselves in to agents instead of trying to dodge them.

Environmentalists have sued over some of the construction contracts for the fencing, saying the government unlawfully waived dozens of laws so it could build on protected lands.

Conservationists say a wall — and its construction— would be detrimental to wildlife habitat and would block the migration of animals such as bighorn sheep and wolves. Two cases are pending in U.S. courts.

“It’s astonishing and sad to see Trump’s border wall being built through the most spectacular desert ecosystem on the planet,” said Laiken Jordahl, borderlands campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity.