U.S. President Donald Trump has been promising to build a wall along the southern border of the United States since long before he became commander in chief. It was his biggest campaign promise, which, at the time, he claimed Mexico would be paying for.
Somehow, things have gone very much the other way. Although Trump has not secured the funding he needs in order to build the whole wall just yet, there are parts of the wall that are under construction in some areas. Unfortunately, according to HuffPost , Mexicans have been making the most of this.
The border areas nearby Tijuana, Mexico, received a modicum of protection in November last year in the form of a fence, but between 15 and 20 sneaky individuals in Mexico have seen this as a prime opportunity. Mexican officials have come forward to say that this group of people has recently been arrested after they were found to be stealing concertina wire from the border site.
They have had good reason though: The thieves have been selling the wire to homeowners in Tijuana who have been wanting to beef up their home security against — ironically — other thieves who could be looking to rob them.
Concertina wire installed by U.S. troops on the border is being stolen and sold for home security in Tijuana. https://t.co/kRxjg0Ux52
— HuffPost (@HuffPost) March 20, 2019
The fence was put up last year after news of a large migrant caravan from Central America heading toward the U.S. broke, and Trump ordered troops to put up a fence in an attempt to stop them.
“We have detected that the barbed wire that was installed in the border area is no longer there,” Marco Antonio Sotomayor Amezcua, the secretary of public safety in Tijuana, said. “We know about the stealing of the concertina [wire] from United States authorities who have asked us for help through the liaison staff.”
Despite the Mexican authorities confirming those they have arrested for the theft of the border fence are all Mexican, some of the residents who purchased it from them to protect their homes have denied the person who sold it to them was Mexican. One woman described the salesman who she got the wire off as having “blue eyes, blonde hair” and said that he “didn’t speak Spanish well.”
Although funding for border walls and fence has been a contentious point in the U.S. — resulting in the longest government shutdown in history when Trump and the Democrats came to an impasse of the amount of money required — the existing fence that has been stolen was sold to some in Tijuana to protect their homes for the equivalent of just $2.10.
Looks like maybe it’s the U.S. paying for Mexican home security, not Mexicans paying for a U.S. border wall after all.
